Pancakes and the Lapa Antique Fair

Woke up this morning at about 9:15 to the sound of an absolute downpour outside. Combined with the sound of Rafael and his friends celebrating a short school-day with animated bouts of video-game soccer, the morning had a powerfully surreal and exciting feeling. So I decided to follow my gut, skip my usual Wednesday schedule of capoeira and yoga from 11 to 2 (oh what a hard life I live) in favor of a trip to the market in order to make pancakes! From scratch! Woo! They turned out surprisingly well, although I sorely felt the lack of dark chocolate chips (I had to use some gross milk chocolate bar instead, and banana) and maple syrup. Of course they didn't hold a candle to Mom's famous pancakes (the powers of which have been known to motivate my friends to rise at the crack of 9:30am on a Saturday in order to be at my house for pancakes at 10:00am), but they'll do in a pinch!

It's 1:45 now and the rain has barely changed! This is the most consistent rain I've seen since I've been here. (What was that about a rainforest, Mom and Mitch?). I love the rain - I'm shocked at how much I've missed that aspect of Berkeley being here. There's something very surreal and magical and exciting about it, especially when you're inside with a cup of tea and some pancakes when you should be out... you know... "exercising".
A place you know intimately can be completely transformed by the rain.

Anyway, I figured I'd take the opportunity to write about the Lapa antique fair.
Every first Saturday of the month, there's an antique fair during the day in Lapa. I decided to go last Saturday. There were a bunch of vendors with booths set up, and a lot of the antique stores and studios had opened up their doors to allow people to walk in and out. The antiques themselves were nothing super-amazing, but the opportunity to see all the old-Rio buildings in the daylight, especially in an atmosphere of festivity, was well worth the trip. Lapa certainly is an amazingly beautiful area. The mansions of all the old, early 20th-century wealth, now in varying states of decrepit decay or restoration are fascinating and beautiful, especially considering the proximity and contrast of nearby ultra-modern buildings like the Petrobras offices and Municipal Cathedral.

And what antiquities did I come away with? Only 1: a shave. Oh yeah, I paid R$5 for a guy who's been doing it for 55 years to clean me up with a straight-razor. Complete with pinching my nose a bit and pulling it up in order to better shave my upper lip. And applying shaving cream with a brush. Afterwards he put about 6 different powders and creams and liquids on my face... the only one I could identify was after-shave, 'cause it burned like the dickens.
I highly recommend it!

Lapa Antique Fair