Luxor Continental Delivers Luxury and Comfort Without High Copacabana Prices
Written: Sep 18 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Comfortable, clean, safe, modern hotel with top-notch service and GREAT RATES!
Cons: Not directly on Copacabana Beach...
The Bottom Line: If you want to do Rio without breaking the bank, let Luxor Continental help. NICE hotel, but without the high beachfront property prices...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Luxor Continental Copacabana |
The Luxor Continental ain't the biggest hotel in Rio de Janeiro. It ain't the cheapest. It ain't the ritziest either. But it is one of the best overall bang for the buck properties that the city has to offer.
I like the Luxor Continental. I like it a lot.
I like the modern feel of the hotel. I like its spotlessly clean modern decor. I like its location, close to the beaches of Copacabana, yet just slightly off the beaten track. I like the amenities, even though I do know of at least a couple hotels that offer more services, or bigger pools, or more elegant dining rooms. There are several hotels in Rio that manage to do something better than Luxor, but the gotcha is that those hoels invariably charge lots more for their services.
That's not to say that the Luxor Continental is cheap --- it most certainly is not a budget hotel. But neither is it a pretentious hotel. In my opinion, the property offers just the right combination of services, quality, location, and price to make it my personal favorite hotel in Rio de Janeiro. Other hotels may do some things better than the Luxor Continental, but none do as many things as well for the price. Bang for the bucks, my friends, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout....and that, my friends, is what makes the Luxor Continental such a standout value.
Let's stroll around the place and you'll see what I mean.
Far From the Maddening Crowds, but So Close to Everything!
I really love the location of the Luxor Continental Hotel. It's Copacabana, but in a quiet way --- tucked a short block off the Leme end of the beach on the side street of Rua Gustavo Sampaio. Luxor's web site, www.luxor-hotels.com.br, claims that this property is "20 yards from the beach". I'm always skeptical about such short distance claims, but in this case, I think that's about right --- what's surprising about it in this case is how different that makes the feel of the place from all the dozens of hotels that face directly onto Avenida Atlantica --- the Copacabana's main drag, yet without feeling downscale like some of the hotels that cluster well off Atlantica on the opposite end of the Copacabana.
Rua Gustavo Sampaio is a very cool and distinctive street --- it is more of an upscale neighborhood location than a busy beachfront avenue, which is what most Copacabana hotels boast. Rua Gustavo Sampaio reminds me of Georgetown side streets in Washington, D.C., or Zona Rosa side streets in Mexico City. It just has that kind of well-heeled gentility to it. Lots of mature trees shading the street with locals ducking in and out of small boutiques, bakeries, green grocer shops, etc. On Saturday afternoons, the street down to the beach is full of small tents for an impromptu marketplace. Yet despite the apparent sanity of the neighborhood, you're still just a 30-second walk to the sun and sand and surf of Copacabana Beach --- albeit, at the quiet Leme end, not the bustlingly hectic Aproador end. I prefer it that way...
Good location. But let's step inside the hotel and see what else there is to like...
In and Around the Hotel...
Sleek and modern! That's the overall feel of the Luxor Continental. It's a towering 21-story highrise with the feel of an elegant upscale business-oriented hotel, yet with all the service of the most intimate posada. Neat trick considering this hotel has on the order of 250 rooms.
The lower level consists of the lobby, the very spacious lobby bar that always seems to be stocked with the current day's newspapers, and a business center that includes computers with high-speed internet access (you'll get 15 minutes access free per day, after that its R6 per 30 minutes --- US$4 per hour). And yes, it really is a broadband-class connection.
The second floor is where the hotel's main restaurant, Poty, is found. Room rates generally include breakfast each day, and it is an excellent breakfast buffet (none of that stale roll and thin coffee stuff that you get at some U.S. chain hotels, which in order to protect the innocent, I will identify only as La Quinta Inns, www.lq.com). More about the food quality in a sec....let me finish telling y'all about the other amenities.
Up on the roof (21st floor) is the pool. It's a fairly small L-shaped, lap-sized pool, but with a nice wide deck and some very impressive vistas of the entire Copacabana area. There's a bar and full-service restaurant up on the roof too, plus the hotel gives you a "welcome drink" coupon so the first drink is on the house. I'm never the kind of guy to turn down a free drink, and I was pretty happy to be sitting out on the 21st floor deck on a beautiful warm Rio afternoon, watching the waves crashing along the Copacabana as I sipped my deliciously free capairinha. Now that's what I call a "welcome"!
The 20th floor houses a spa. There's a spacious exercise room there with lots of very new looking equipment. Best of all, it's a heck of a lot nicer than most exercise rooms I've seen lately. The difference? The exercise bikes and treadmills face a row of open windows, letting the warm sea breeze waft through your hair while you can watch the happenings on the beach below, or just gaze at the ships steaming out of the harbor. Sure as heck beats a stuffy interior room with a stupid TV stuck on CNN, don't it!!
Service is absolutely 5-star. Every employee I met was cheerful, efficient, and friendly. Never ever stuffy. The receptionists dealt with my frequent reservation changes with dignity almost to the point of implying that my indecision was somehow their shortcoming. (The front desk staff also all speak excellent English, by the way, so even the most linguistically challenged travelers should feel confident booking a room here.)
Eat, Drink, and Be Jolly...
The hotel features two full-service restaurants. The Terrace Grill, up on the roof, right next to the swimming pool, is a casual comfortable dining room, even though its on the upscale side and not what I'd really call "casual dining". The menu is mostly a subset of what you'll find in Poty, the hotel's main restaurant (located on the second floor). A few sandwiches, light appetizers, three or four salads, a scattering of five or six entrees, plus full bar service and a limited desert tray. Prices are reasonable, and the food pretty good, though to be honest, the reason to eat in the Terrace Grill is for the stunning vistas from the rooftop perspective. The service is actually better, and the menu more extensive down in the main restaurant.
The main restaurant, Poty, is a large formal dining room occupying most of the second floor. A full breakfast buffet is included in the room rate, a full lunch buffet is served in the early afternoon, and dinner service is a la carte from the menu.
Breakfast buffets are amazing! There are three or four hot dishes, but the real star of this breakfast buffet is their big smorgasbord of fresh baked breads, rolls, pastries and so forth. A couple sweet rolls and a few pieces of fruit from the fresh fruit bar is usually enough for me, especially when accompanied by some good hot coffee. Gringos beware though! The coffee served here is not your wimpy, watery 7-11 swill --- this is coffee for real tastebuds! This is coffee that will make you stand up and be noticed. High octane stuff! The basic "coffee" is stronger than most expressos I've had. Now I understand why Brazilians often serve coffee with fully half a cup or more of steamed milk --- they need all that milk to cut the coffee down to something thinner than asphalt.
I had several cups of the coffee, black, each morning. Great stuff!
The lunch buffet is a good deal at around R28 (about US$8 per person). Unlike the breakfast buffet, which is pretty much the same stuff every day, the lunch buffet does change --- especially on Saturdays when the hotel serves a traditional feijoada. It was an interesting dish, but I think I'll leave it to the Brazilians from now on. It was an experience, but things like beef tongue and cows ears aren't exactly appetizing my perhaps too North American palate...
Room service is available 24 hours a day, and prices are generally pretty reasonable. Even the mini-bar prices aren't too bad: R4 for a beer ($1.30) is about as cheap as you'll ever find. It's the same price if you run out and order more from room service...drink up!
If you do want to get out of the hotel, there's also plenty of good eats within easy walking distance. The Sindicato do Chopp on Avenida Atlantica serves inexpensive food and has a good beer selection, though its popular and can be tough to get a table after about 8pm. If you walk a couple blocks up Rua Gustavo Sampaio (toward Copacabana Central), you'll find a place called Shirley's with a display case full of impossibly huge seafood offerings --- pick your shrimp, salmon steaks, crabs, or whatever, and chow down like you've never had seafood before, because I guarantee you have not had seafood until you've had Shirley's seafood!
Step Into My Not Quite Beachfront Lair....
The rooms are spotlessly clean. Bright and airy feeling, with light, modern decor with a definite Scandinavian feel to it. The rooms are comfortable. They are also small. Matchbox small. There's next to no wasted space because I'm really wondering how they managed to ever squeeze the bed into that dinky little space.
Fortunately for me, I wasn't looking for a room to play soccer in, just a room to sleep in for a few hours each night (oh all right, so it was really more like a few hours each morning --- this is, after all, Rio).
The bathroom was made even more cramped feeling by the excessive space wasted for a bidet. I wonder if anyone actually uses bidets. They sure are ugly, and I think that if hotels are going to foist such ugly contrivances on guests, they should also have the courtesy to put urinals in all the rooms. That would be equally silly, extravagant, and useless, and could waste a few extra precious square feet of floor space, plus women could then rage on about the silliness of such plumbing fixtures. Fair is fair.
Despite the lack of floorspace, the shower somehow manages to be quite large and nice. I love the marble shelves, and I'm really getting hooked on these big fat rainmaker style shower heads. They friggin' rule!
One thing that a traveler to Brazil should be aware of is that much of the country uses 220v power by default and a lot of Brazilian appliances have these odd round-pronged outlets. This hotel does have 110v power in the guest rooms, so your laptop or shaver will work just fine (don't count on the cell phone charger though --- not unless you know about swapping the chips in your GSM phones --- which TIM will do for you, by the way, if you want to mess with it).
Lots of room in the closet, and I like that each room has a safe in it. You need to get a key from the front desk, and they charge $1 to use the safe, but you definitely do not want to be walking around Rio with a pocket full of cash, credit cards, your passport, jewelry, etc. Well, not unless you plan on making a substantial donation to Rio's criminally inclined under-class.
Small 13 inch TV. I didn't get a chance to turn it on, so no idea how many channels they get. Too much other fun stuff in Rio to keep me busy to ever bother with TVs...
The hotel charges a premium price for "oceanview rooms". If you pay it, you'll probably be put on the 17th or 18th floors, which easily see out over any other building nearby. I didn't pay the premium. I had a view into some guy's apartment across Rua Gustavo Sampaio. He liked black leather furniture. Next time I hope I get a room across from a woman's apartment....
Bottom Line...
I paid US$79 per night for a small, but clean and modern, room in an excellent hotel with top-flight service located just steps from the beach. Scuzzy hotels on Avenida Atlantica get that much. My options in Rio were either settle for a lot less quality to get beachfront, pay a lot more money for beachfront in a similar quality hotel, or check into the Luxor Continental and get great quality, while settling for an address that was 20 steps to the beach instead of directly across the street from the beach.
For what I got for the money, I think the Luxor Continental is an outstanding overall value for Rio's Copacabana area. Bang for the buck, baby. Luxor Continental delivers it. That's why this property is the place I'll go back to next time I get a chance to visit Rio.
Recommended:
Yes
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