We had booked a silly o’clock flight from Cuiaba to Rio via Brasilia (apparently most flights over 2 hours in Brazil will involve a connecting flight) because I felt that we were going to use every hour we had paid the Rio hotel for. Because we were flying internally we landed at the Santos Dumont airport which is on an island in the city and gives a spectacular view as you land.
Being a bit of a Barry Manilow fan, we of course had no choice but to stay at Copacabana. I also felt if we were going to stay there we might as well have a view. It did feel very surreal to be seeing “that” view
Rio was warm when we were there (28 degrees-ish) but it was a bit cloudy. As two of Rio’s crowd pleasers are things on hilly things this was a bit awkward. Our first evening we hung around Copacabana and chose to have dinner at our hotel’s rooftop restaurant.
The next day we went over to the twin city Niteroi. We wimped out a bit in the morning and opted to be taken by taxi over. But we got brave when we got there and decided to walk a few miles around Niteroi, have lunch and then take the ferry back to downtown Rio.
Looking at the sky we thought we would head to Sugarloaf mountain. This to me was the “oh gosh i’m actually in Rio” outing. There was a little museum at the top where we learnt that Rio was a French colony and it was only the Portuguese desire to thwart the French that caused them to establish the city.The museum showed lots of the iconic images of the mountain which in turn prompted tourists to make the trip to exotic Brazil (later on the driving force for tourism was apparently Carmen Miranda).
We decided to go on a walking tour of downtown Rio. One of the main learning points of the tour was that the Portuguese Royal Family and 10,000 or so chums decided to leave their populace to Napoleon and leg it Rio. Needless to say the Portuguese people were not very impressed. The Brazilians were also not that happy as anyone with a nice place to live was booted out and their home and belongings given to one of the incoming Portuguese. In 1822, Brazil declared independence but was ruled by the heir to the Portuguese throne, Prince Pedro, who declared himself Emperor Pedro I of Brazil. The country became a republic in 1889.
I don’t know what I was expecting of downtown Rio, but I thought it would be a bit easier to get to the sights. The city was a bit exhausting to traverse and the air was smoggy but this was probably exacerbated by them digging up a lot of the city in advance of the Olympics. It did feel pretty continental though and it was nice to see some historical buildings as unfortunately in Sao Paulo they had demolished most of them.
After the tour we headed over to the Museum of Modern Art Rio as there was an exhibition of a very famous Brazilian artist, Iberê Camargo. His paintings were a bit intense and it was nice to get back into the sunshine.
Charmingly titled “Everything is False and Useless to You”
Although it was still cloudy we thought we would take the bus over to the funky giant Jesus.
We then chose a bus to take us back to our hotel by a circuitous route that would allow us to see more of the city.The bus fare is about 60p. At peak times the buses have a person separate to the driver dealing with fares. They also allow vendors to climb onto the bus to sell snacks and drinks to the passengers.
Our final morning was spent on Copacabana and being a Saturday, it was starting to get busy. I am not a beachy person as I get too bored lying around on the sand getting hot. But I could see the appeal of these beaches- there was so much going on and it had a great atmosphere. Everyone was just getting on with their day enjoying the ocean in their own way.
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