My Road to Rio: The Olympic Events

In Rio last month, I was fortunate enough to have scored tickets to the placing, semi-final, and final matches of the Rugby Sevens and the Round of 16 in beach volleyball. And once my brother and I arrived in Rio and decided we wanted to see another Olympic match, we ended up getting tickets to see Bandminton. The cheapest tickets for any event was roughly $22. This was about the same price as the tickets that I scored during the London Olympics as well. Really, if you can commit to going and find a decent flight deal and decently priced accommodations, attending the Olympic Games can be quite affordable! And I want to share my experience attending these events and exploring Rio here with you. So this is Part 2 of my Olympic post, my spectator experience in Rio.

Getting Around

Once my brother and I were in Rio, we  took the metro/train to Deodoro Stadium to watch Rubgy! We landed early in the morning, took a taxi to our hostel to check in and store our things in a locker, then hopped on the metro. It was a little over $1 each way to get there, but it did take quite a while to get there as well. They closed off the 2 closest metro stations to the stadium for safety reasons, so we had to walk for about 45 minutes and waited through multiple security lines. And I'm sure it didn't help that I accidentally got us on the local train line instead of the express train line that we needed to take when we transferred at the Central Station. Whoops!

For beach volleyball, our hostel was within a few blocks of the arena, so we didn't need to go far on our second day. On our third day in Rio, we needed to go west near the Olympic Village in Tijuca which was a journey. And we could not get there without purchasing these "Olympic travel cards" for R25, which was a total and complete ripoff when it's only R3-4 to get anywhere in the city via transit. This made me extremely frustrated, especially since in London, transit was free if you had tickets to an event for that day. Anyway, to get there, we took the Line 1 train to the end of the line, then transferred onto the brand new Line 4 which was only available to people with Olympic tickets. At the end of that line, we had to take BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) to get to the Olympic venues. And once we were let off, we had to walk about 20 minutes to get to the Riocentro pavilion. This was more of a chore than getting to the Deodoro stadiums. It took over 2 hours, and we were there early. When we were leaving, there was a loooong line to get through security and into the venue. We got lucky to get there when we did. We stayed for only an hour since we had reservations for the tram up to the Cristo Redentor statue in Corcovado, and left an hour before that since google said it was only 40 minutes away when I checked the day before; however, when we finally got a taxi (there was no time to call an Uber), the GPS noted a TON of traffic. We passed a motorcyclist who was hit in the dedicated Olympic fast lanes, sprawled across the two lanes of pavement, on top of just a lot of cars being on the road. It ended up taking an hour and 40 minutes to get to Corcovado, but it still saved us over an hour compared to how long it would have taken on public transit. Plus, it was R100 which amounted to under $30 for that long of a drive. There is nowhere in the Western world that a taxi ride like that would have been so relatively cheap. 

Rugby Sevens

Team USA vs. Spain in the 9th place match

Rugby was on the north side of Rio in the Deodoro Stadium. It was surprisingly empty in the endzone and since there was General Admission seating, we were able to move to the middle section quite easily. For our first ticket, we saw 6 placing matches, including the USA vs. Spain match. It was exciting! In the end we won, of course! And to top it off, we ended up randomly sitting next to the family of one of the US players. He showed up after the match to watch the remaining games with us. I sat next to his dad who was originally from England and got to chat with him through the event. It was a neat experience to be a part of that.

I have never seen a Rugby Sevens match before this. I didn't realize that each half would only be 7 minutes long, with a 2 minute halftime. Basically, rugby is a mix of American football and soccer. The biggest difference from football is that when the person with the ball is tackled, the clock doesn't stop and they have to pass the ball to another team member instead of starting the play over again.

Team GB vs. Fiji in the Gold medal match

I was fortunate enough to snag tickets to the finals in Rugby as well, and there was nothing like watching Fiji beat Great Britain in the Gold medal match. I was rooting for Team GB, but seriously no one was a match for the sheer brute strength behind the Fijian team. Holy cow! At one point, a GB player attempted to tackle a Fijian player but the dude kept running with the GB guy clinging to his leg! And after a few steps, he stopped to kind of kick the poor dude off before running a little further. It was amazing to watch! Plus it was the first Olympic medal for Fiji ever. So cool!

Beach Volleyball

Brazil vs. China

Being from Hawaii, of course we had to watch beach volleyball! What a spectacular venue! This pop-up stadium was built right on Copacabana Beach itself. There were berms along the outside to keep the water from eroding the beach under the stadium and getting into the arena area. I was fortunate to have also watched beach volleyball at the London Olympics in 2012 at the Horse Guards Parade smack dab in the middle of the city, and that was my favorite venue then as it was in Rio this time around. I mean, look at that view! From our seats, we could see the Atlantic Ocean on the left, the classic Copa skyline on the right, and then the game right there in the middle. We also got lucky enough to watch Brazil compete in this match. It's always super fun when you have a chance to watch the host country play. Each ticket allows you to watch one men's match and one women's match. We got to see Qatar vs. Russia in the men's match, which was exciting because there was a guy from Rio on the Qatar team. And for the women's match, we saw Brazil vs. China. The stadium remained relatively empty until halfway through the last set. All of a sudden, all these Brazilians showed up to root for their team. It was a blast! The music and cheers between rallies were mostly local and everyone would sing and cheer and dance along. It was quite an experience!

Badminton

At the last minute, my brother and I decided to stand in the long line at the ticket office just outside of the beach volleyball arena to see if we could see any other events on our third and final day in Rio. We ended up with cheap tickets to watch Badminton. What an interesting Olympic sport! I had never watched competitive badminton before, but it seemed like it could be fun! Our tickets were for matches between 8am and 2pm. We decided to go for a little over an hour in the morning so we could still fit in a visit to the Christ Redeemer statue as well. It was quite a trek to get to the Olympic park where the event was held, but I'm glad we went. It was not what I expected at all. Badminton was held in a convention center! They put up temporary bleacher seating in a convention hall and made 3 courts side by side in the middle. You wouldn't be able to tell from watching it on tv, but they always have 3 games going at the same time. When one match ends, they throw the next team on, regardless of whether it was singles, doubles, men's or women's or mixed. You can see in the picture above that there is a doubles match going on to the right, a singles match in the middle, and another doubles on the left. And the crowd was SO into it! I didn't know badminton could get so intense! We were lucky enough to watch the beginning of a Team USA vs. Germany doubles match as well. Good thing we were wearing our Team USA gear!

Inside the Riocentro convention center

Cristo Redentor


It wouldn't be a trip to Rio without a visit to either the Christ Redeemer statue (Cristo Redentor) or Sugarloaf Mountain. Both sites have great views of the city, but I opted to take my brother to the statue since it was a more recognizable icon of Rio and I wasn't sure if he'd ever make the trip to South America ever again. Of course there were crazy crowds at the top, but I was able to book our entry and tram tickets in advance. When we arrived an hour late for our reservation due to traffic even after taking a taxi ride there, the man in the ticket office just put us on the next tram up, which was nice. The tram ride up to the statue in Corcovado is really neat since it's so steep and you have such amazing views along the way. The wait was a bit longer trying to come down the mountain, but we got lucky again and ended up waiting in line with the entire USA Wrestling team. We chatted some with one of the coaches who noticed our Team USA attire, and we ended up getting free Team USA Olympic Wresting pins!

VIP Lounges and Houses

Another highlight of the Olympics is always the free lounges. Since I went to the London Olympics, I was on the lookout for any fun houses and free events to attend. In London, I went to the Chase Visa VIP Lounge and was able to score free pins, free food and drinks, and even dinner cooked for me by Iron Chef Morimoto. Twice! This time around, Chase did a condensed version of their lounge which only lasted through the first weekend and was only open to Chase MileagePlus card holders, not just Chase Visa card holders like the last time. Luckily our parents have the card and have added us as authorized users, so we got in! And again, there were free pins, free keychains, free hats, free food and drinks (I drank probably 2 liters worth of Schwepps Cirtus!), and free WiFi! We pretty much spent the entire night there that Saturday meeting some new people and watching the US compete in swimming and athletics (track & field) on the big screens they had throughout the lounge.

One of the main features of the lounge was the meet and greet with various Olympians, so I got to meet Summer Sanders who became famous for swimming in the Barcelona Olympics for Team USA. It turns out that she lives in Utah as well and we had a great conversation! Plus she really liked my name! :)

Another highlight was running into my friend, Nick, at the lounge! He flew down for the weekend like I did (see, I'm not the only crazy one!) to watch his cousin compete for Team USA in rowing. It was a pleasant surprise to see a familiar face at the Olympics! It's funny because I became friends with Nick and his friend, Sam, when they were both on my flight to and from Abu Dhabi last May. That trip was also a weekender, which not a lot of people would do. It's always fun to meet like-minded people in the travel world. 

Next Stop Tokyo!

When I got home from Rio, I thought that maybe I was done with the Olympics. I had seen most of what i wanted to see, and unless I could get tickets to watch swimming, I didn't think I was going to go to Toyko. But that all changed when I watched the amazing presentation for Tokyo 2020 at the closing ceremony. I was so excited to see the cute, fun, and high-tech elements in their presentation including watching PM Shinzo Abe as Mario! With Super Mario, Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and Totoro, I just cannot wait to see what Japan does in 2020, especially with their people and their government so on board! So now I can definitely say that I do intend to go to Tokyo in 2020. And I'll be sure to keep you updated on my journey to Tokyo here as well. Who knows...maybe I'll see you there!