Cristo Redentor

Even on a sunny day, with blue skies and puffy clouds, I wouldn't have been that impressed by the statue. It's colossal, of course; those outstretched arms are 28 meters across—almost 100 feet. But you lose the scale seeing it up close. If I'd had to guess how tall it was I would have said maybe fifty feet, but it's twice that. You really get a much better sense of the drama of it from a distance, or in the many photographs taken from the air.

There's a tiny chapel inside the pedestal, which was packed with people trying to get out of the rain, and I sat there for a while. I much preferred the painting there to the statue outside.