Falling For Rio...
Written: Oct 24 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Warm and soft and sensuous...
Cons: Crime, many rough neighborhoods...
The Bottom Line: When I'm reincarnated, I want to come back as a carioca. Here's why...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Rio de Janeiro |
People in Rio de Janiero call themselves "cariocas", and the cariocas refer to their city as "la Cidade Maravilhosa" --- the Marvelous City. Anyplace else on Earth, and such a thing would sound like just so much puffery and imagination. Calling Rio "marvelous" is something altogether different. As it turns out, the adjective understates the graces and charms of what has just got to be the most beautiful city on Earth.
I can't think of any other place I've been where the geography and topography make such a dramatic natural statement. Rio is a coastal city, with 46 miles of beachfront property on the Atlantic Ocean. Lots of cities lie on the ocean, but few manage to do so with such boldness. In Rio, the mountains come right up to the sea to soak their feet in the cooling waves.
You've seen the pictures of Rio --- everyone has. The impossibly white, impossibly wide and long arcs of Copacabana and Ipanema. The intense colors and imagery of the samba parades during the Bacchanalian revelry of Carnaval. The Christ Statue, guarding over the cariocas from one peak, the cable cars up the infamous Sugarloaf on another. The forts. The parks. The peaks. At the base of those mountains, the city winds its way in between the valleys, through tunnels, and around numerous lagoons, bays, and lakes. Islands beckon visitors for daytrips, and those parks on the peaks beckon visitors to come enjoy a magnificent sunset, sitting on a breezy deck, sipping an ice cold caipirinha.
The beauty of the city is hardly skin deep. Rio is, in my opinion, also the world's most human city. It is a city that lives to live. It is a city that knows how to have a good time. Carnaval in Rio. Does the world have a bigger party anywhere? I doubt it. And New Years Eve in Rio. Does the world have a more spectacular celebration of the changing of the calendar? I doubt it. And the music. Does the world swing and sway in a more seductive way than to a bossa nova? I doubt it. And the women. Does the world have a place with more sensuously beautiful women? (Maybe Venezuela, but that would be a close race.)
The BEST Things to See in Rio...
You won't have time to see everything worthwhile in Rio --- not unless you're planning to move there permanently. Lots of stuff. Here are some of the things I thought were most impressive about the city...
Corcovado: The Statue of Christ Redeemer
Postcard photo shot time! Rio is famous for the vista of its huge Christ statue, watching over the city below from its perch high atop Corcovado. From the decks surrounding the statue's base, you get some of the most stunning vistas of the city and its dramatic setting. There are also souvenir shops and a cafe up there. Parking looks non-existent, but it doesn't matter since everyone goes up via the cog railway.
Older travel guides tell you to be prepared for a lot of climbing. That is no longer true. Last year, the city installed new escalators and elevators, so now even yhe mobility challenged can get access all the way up to the Christ statue's base.
Sugarloaf
Rio landmarks --- can't talk about 'em without talking about Sugarloaf Mountain (Pao de Acucar to the cariocas). Its an easy place to visit, with the cable car station being all of 5 minutes by taxi from the hotel zone of Copacabana. Of course, the taxi ride isn't the thing that makes Sugarloaf take a good 3 to 4 hours to visit. There's quite a bit to see and do up there, and besides, the cable cars up the mountain are going to take you anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes (most of 'em waiting in the station since cars only run every 30 minutes).
Its R30 (US$10) for the round trip. You get four tickets. The first cable car goes to the top of Morro da Urca, the second goes across to Pao de Acucar.
There is fair amount to do on the peaks of both mountains, and the views are incredible (even if your photos don't look too impressive when you visit on a cloudy day).
Morro da Urca has a couple cafes, some souvenir shops, and also a helicopter pad where you can take off on an aerial tour of Rio. They do everything from short 5-minute flights around the Christ Statue to longer city tours that fly along all of the major beaches.
Downtown Colonial and Historical Sites
I love cities --- especially ones that have a sense of individuality and a lot of history behind them. If you like cities as much as I do, you'll want to explore some of Rio's more interesting downtown historic and cultural landmarks. There are some pre-packaged bus tours that your hotel concierge can hook you up with that will hit most of these places within the span of a few hours. Some of these will be full-day tours that also throw in a run up to Corcovado or Sugarloaf. You can do it on your own easily enough though --- just get a good downtown city map and stroll at your own pace. Here are a few of the highlights...
As always in latin America, do the churches. They are phenomenal places that are often filled with amazing works of ecclesiastic art (the only kind of art produced in many countries for several centuries). I liked the Sao Bernardo Monasterio for its dramatic hilltop setting and its jaw-droppingly beautiful gold plated ceiling that runs the entire length of its enormous nave. The church was built in 1590, but nowadays, they are most famous for their Gregorian choir mass (Sunday mornings at 10am). I also loved the beautifully restored old Convento Santo Antonio (dates from 1608), with its somewhat more subdued but very historic feel --- this is also a place filled with stories, like one of the ghost of Saint Anthony showing up in the cariocas' hour of need, just in time to repel an attack by the dastardly French. Ingreja Candelaria is a definite "don't miss" church --- it's so huge that you'd have a tough time missing it, even if you wanted to (which you don't).
Just around the corner from the Igreja Candelaria is the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center; beautiful facility that celebrates and promotes all of the arts, with a series of very good art galleries plus venues for live theatre, concerts, and art films. Check out the rotunda with its ornate glass dome!
Of course you'll want to visit the Imperial Plaza (Paco Imperial), which has a very cool 17th and 18th century feel to it. Some of the buildings off the square are over 400 years old (ahhh, that reminds me, I need to send a birthday card to my mother-in-law). Arco de Teles feels like nothing much has changed in the past century, except maybe the ownership of some of the small boutique shops or small sidewalk bars and coffee shops.
There are also several parks, plazas, and monuments in the area, plus a couple of interesting museums. The city's biggest museum is the Museum Nacional de Belas Artes (National Fine Arts Musuem). There is also a large Modern Art Museum, but I've heard the collection is a shadow of what it once was (the museum had a fire some 15 years ago, and has since rebuilt its collection, though of course you can never really replace a work of art). I was told that there is an excellent Contemporary Art Museum across the bay in Niteroi, but I didn't get out there this trip.
Tijuca National Park
There's kind of a cool story behind Tijuca National Park. When Rio was growing, it was pretty much a helter-skelter rush to chop down everything in sight, sort of like any other expanding new frontier. But in the mid 1800s, Emperor Dom Pedro somehow got to thinking that all those mown down forests that once surrounded Rio should be replanted. And so he started what is probably the first (and one of the largest and most successful) conservation projects --- planting hundreds of thousands of trees to re-establish the Tijuca Forest.
Tijuca is known as the world's largest urban area forest, and the city does meander around the forest, and some of the citys best known sites are in or around the National Park. (When you go up to Corcovado, you'll be inside the park itself.)
There are hiking and biking trails in the park, but we saw most of it from the back seat of a taxi cab, eyes shut at least 20 percent of the time as the driver careened around hairpin curves and passed people with more faith in God than line of sight. There are some good lookout points with excellent vistas of the city and the ocean.
Botanical Gardens
Rio's Botanical Gardens are regarded as one of the best gardens in the world --- they're certainly huge, sprawling across several square miles and including some six lakes (naturally, serving as habitat for numerous exotic and indigenous flora). It's fun to just stroll for a few hours, checking out some of the historic buildings in the park, the green houses, the flower gardens, or just resting peacefully in the Japanese Garden.
I've been to a few botanical gardens in the U.S., but never one that felt like this one. I think the difference is the way that this place seems to reach out to embrace all cariocas, young or old. Most botanical gardens are peaceful places, but few do things like offering an expansive childrens area with a huge sandbox for them to play in and even a snack bar that is decidedly kid oriented.
You could blow through it quickly in a taxi or tour bus, but its also the kind of place where an eco-minded traveler could probably burn a full day and still feel like coming back for more.
Beaches: Copacabana, Ipanema, Barra Tijuca, Leme, Leblon, and More...
Rio's beach scene is second to none. The beaches themselves are beautiful --- long, wide beaches in a temperate area where swimsuits are always in season. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but my 2 cents is that Copacabana is the most spectacular of them all. But you could easily visit Rio and come away with a totally different take on it, after all, Ipanema is definitely the more style-conscious and trendy beach, and Barra Tijuca is longer that almost all the others combined. Visit all of 'em though, and let your own tastes be your guide. Heck, a guy could spend a month in Rio and never venture beyond the beaches. And if you do want to venture out of Rio, there are plenty more beaches north and south of the city, not to mention a bunch of islands lying just off the coast with hundreds more miles of soft sandy shores...
Sambodromo: If you're in Rio for Carnaval, then its a given that you'll try to get samba tickets. I was there in September; the Sambodromo is pretty much a ghost time at that time of year. Still, it's an interesting few minute stop to see the sheer length of the parade ground and to wonder at what it must be like to be sitting in the stands when the party is in full swing. There's also a small museum there (about the size of a suburban family home). Inside are exhibits telling the story of Carnaval and the samba. Several actual samba costumes are on display, and not only are there no "Do Not Touch" signs, you can put on the costumes and dance around yourself if you want to!
Maracana Stadium: Bills itself as the world's greatest soccer stadium, and it most certainly is an impressive place, but I think it really needs either a serious facelift or a total replacement (lots of chipped concrete at the edges of the building, chipped paint everywhere, dead trees outside, broken sidewalks, etc.) But if you are a true soccer fan, then you'll want to see this 160,000 seat chapel to Brazil's favorite pasttime. The tour is pretty cool --- you can actually walk around in the stands, pretty much whereever you want, and you can go down into the team locker rooms and out onto part of the playing field. Although the stadium shows more than a few cracks and warts, its also an impressive piece of stadium design since there is obviously not a single bad seat in the house (not even one sight-line obstruction that I could see, not anywhere).
Yep. There's a lot to see and do in Rio. I'd suggest getting out to the library and snagging a couple of good travel guides to Rio and clicking around the 'net to see what some of the Rio web sites have to say for themselves. I know there are lots of museums, monuments, beaches, parks, shopping arcades, tours, trips, traps, and so on and so forth.
Things to Keep in Mind...
Here's a few little odds and ends that might interest you...
Night Life: Rio has a very well deserved reputation for being a party city. Carnaval and New Years Eve always put the city in the spotlight as "world party central", but the city swings and sways every night of the year. Bars and nightclubs don't close until the sun comes up and the beachside bars start opening up. Live music is everywhere --- after all this is the city that invented samba and bossa nova. There is plentiful nightlife everywhere in the city, including Ipanema, Copacabana, and Barra Tijuca, but some of the downtown clubs are where you'll find the more sophisticated clientele and a lot of your jazz clubs. Downtown, the nightclubs concentrate around Lapa and Arco de Telles. In Ipanama, they're around Baixo Leblon. And of course there are places like the world famous Help Disco in Copacabana, the place where anyone can get laid. By the way, nightclubs are called "boates", but it's pronounced more like "boy-cheese". If you're headed to Rio and looking for some specific recommendations, shoot me an email and I'll tell you about a few of the bars that I thought were worthwhile.
Crime and Poverty: Rio has something of a reputation as a place that can get rough, especially if someone strays into the poorer neighborhoods. Read the crime warnings on the State Department web site (travel.state.gov) to be aware, then, you might want to also book one of the increasingly popular "favela tours" where tourists can go into a favela (usually Rocinho, which some people say has become too civilized nowadays to be really considered a "favela", but at least tourists do generally come out with their lives, and even wallets, intact.)
Money: When you see an ATM with a Visa/MasterCard/Plus/Cirrus logo on it, get some cash! We found that, in most parts of Brazil, almost 70 percent of the ATMs we came across did not work with our U.S.-issued bank cards. In many banks, all of the ATMs appeared to be for use by local account holders only (no network access). We had the best luck with logo-bearing machines in HSBC and Banco do Brazil locations. (Of course, all the ATMs in the airport had networkd access.) My brother swore that exchange rates are always best early in the morning --- and most ATMs did display the exchange rate right on the screen and gave you the option of cancelling the transaction if you didn't like it. Pretty cool.
Three INTERESTING Sources of "Know Before You Go" Info...
Here's a few web sites where you can find some good background info to read up on before you hop the plane down to Rio...
Riotur: The city's tourism department has a wealth of good info on their web site: www.riodejaneiro.com.br
Some of the recommendations are a bit innocuous, but it is a good starting point, and their information about sites around the city is excellent.
Ipanema.com: I love this web site, which also has recommendations on lots of places in Copacabana and elsewhere in Rio. One of the best things about Ipaname.com is that they have a good set of mini-reviews on lots of hotels throughout Ipaname and Copacabana, and they'll even make the reservations for you.
Rio for Partiers: This is a guidebook with attitude and spunk and enthusiasm. It will tell you where to drink (everywhere), when to drink (always), and what to drink (everything). It will tell you how to pick up girls or guys (your choice, regardless of your gender). It will tell you about discounts on lots of things. It will tell you which clubs have the hottest dance scenes on which nights (it changes regularly, so there is also a site for updated info: www.RioForPartiers.com
A Photo is Worth At Least a Few Words...
Okay, you've read the opinion (Thank You!), now take a look at a few of the snapshots. I put a few of my Rio photos online at: http://www.tiogringo.com/rio.html
The Bottom Line...
I love Rio. This is a city that knows how to enjoy life. The only U.S. city that I think comes close to the attitude of Rio is New Orleans, and just as Mardi Gras is the essence of the New Orleans spirit, so too, Carnaval is at the very heart and soul of Rio de Janeiro.
The locals call Rio "the marvelous city". Words like "stupendous", "magnificent", and "incredible" would also be appropriate, but I think the cariocas are on to something. "Marvelous" just has the right ring to it. It feels more natural and sensuous, and that's basically what Rio is all about.
Closely Related...
Here's a little more Rio-related opinionating for your reading pleasure...
* Copacabana
* Ipanema
* Luxor Continental Hotel
* Drinking Beer Like a Brazilian
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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