25/3 – Just another ordinary Tuesday.

The rain is pouring down and creates an almost horizontal stripe pattern in front of the traffic lights. The city and one of the most buzzing streets during the Carnaval are still recovering from the party of the year. After weeks of overloading all senses and the final discharge of energy during the last few days of the Carnaval, it’s like everything needs a big long breather.

I’ve decided to let the rain win and have dinner at the hotel restaurant. Three British girls, who are sitting just by the stairs up to the terrace and talking with the most high pitch voices imaginable, are starting to get more and more wine into their systems. Once their food arrives, it doesn’t take long before the waiter is called back. Apparently there’s something wrong with the plates, or the food, or both, hard to get a grasp on really. Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, the food complaints drift over into something that, from where I sit, seems like flirting with the young waiter instead. I’m struggling to keep a straight face when the flirting hits it off big time with questions about his age and work and finally origin: Where are you from? Ah, your parents are from Thailand. How neat. Do you speak Chinese? Sigh. The Dutch guy at the other end of the terrace, who is pretending to focus on his iPhone just as hard as I am with my book, makes a strange choking noise. Luckily, I hadn’t had a sip of the white recently, or it would have been all over the table by now.

For some reason Tô nem ai is more quiet than usual, no one out on the sidewalk drinking and chatting, just the normal clientele inside with the standard semi shocked middle-aged tourist couples here and there. The couples that didn’t really have a look around before they ordered the food, and now they can’t leave because they’ve just ordered tonight’s dinner. For some reason the middle-aged husband normally looks more bothered than the wife. If it had been a warm and clear night, the street would have been packed all the way from Poste 8 to the bar with happy mingling guys.

After numerous days at the hotel, the staff seems more like your neighbours than strict waiters and waitresses at the posh restaurant – and this meant in a pure positive way. No raised eyebrows anymore when I arrange the sugar stand and olive oil container to keep my book open or when I decide to have dinner at more European hours than the Brazilian midnight style.

Just a few inches from me, but on the other side of the glass wall, a pair of lovebirds seems to have a romantic dinner enjoying the Asian goodies at one of the tables inside. The guy to the left with a big tattoo sticking out from his t-shirt sleeve and the guy to the right with a silly smile on his face and eyes lost somewhere in far away land.

In other words, just another ordinary Tuesday evening at Rua Farme de Amoedo in the marvellous city of Rio de Janeiro.