The next day we had most of the morning to sleep in. Our only events of the day were the Men’s Basketball Finals and Closing Ceremonies.
We won Gold, which was awesome, but it wasn’t even a close game. I actually started feeling bad for Serbia near the end of it as we had double their score. It was a swift victory, and I was glad we weren’t playing against Brasil because people get really into their teams there. There was a fun break from basketball though when the Mascot came out to dance. He was doing Whip and Nae Nae before I got my camera out so sorry Stasia, but this is still pretty good too.
Afterwards, we took a bus directly to closing ceremonies. Traffic was horrendous, because you know everyone who was going to see events all over the city all week were now all headed to the same event at the same venue at the same time. I would guess the bus ride took about two hours. Also, did I mention the rain? It was raining very hard. Even after we arrived….
Everyone was soaked. The athletes, the performers, everyone in their seats (it was an open air stadium). I could have been pretty miserable but I had a raincoat and a poncho on top of it and just tried to enjoy it the best I could. Which was great, because Douglas and Randy finally spotted us on TV!!!
I went back to theNBC Closing Ceremonies Live Replay on NBC’s Website and around 2:30:00 I snagged those shots above. I look like I’m wearing a Hijab but whatever, it’s cool. We left soon after this, but what was awesome was that during the announcement of the 2020 Olympic in Japan Mario came out of the stage!
Nintendo almost NEVER does any agreements for anything so if they are involved in the Tokyo Olympics that is just going to be so awesome. The way home didn’t take near as long, and we were back to the hotel before we knew it!
Departure day was a LONG day. Our flight didn’t leave until late evening so we spent most of the day packing and getting ready in the hotel. By the time we got to the airport the place was swamped – everyone kept telling us that it was the busiest day in the airport’s history.
Getting through security wasn’t too horrible with NBC, and we actually boarded on time as well. But then we got stuck on the tarmac for almost 2 hours, and even though we sprinted as soon as we landed in Houston we missed our connection. Sticky, stinky, and exhausted, we finally got on a standby flight (middle seat coach!) and got home safe. It was a great adventure we both really enjoyed. Brasil is a beautiful country, although I don’t know that I would have done something like this without the group we had. We were chaperoned, carted around in busses, and we had a security detail following us almost everywhere we went. It truly was a safe, super awesome vacation.
