Learning to cook a dish from one of Asia’s best restaurants, mastering the art of making macarons in Paris, and cooking with a Countess in Venice are just a few of our picks of the best cooking classes in the world. I've long said that discovering the cuisine of a destination is a way into the heart [...]
Our local guide to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s sexy seaside city, covers the things that locals love to do, from sipping sucos to samba dancing. As the 2016 Olympic Games is kicking off on 6 August, we thought we’d share some of our favourite things to do in Rio. Our Local Guide to Rio de Janeiro Start with a suco [...]
We've heard a lot of live music during our two week stay in Rio de Janeiro – at bars, clubs, by the beach, and in the streets of this hip-swinging Brazilian city. It’s hard not to hear music in a city where nearly every cultural activity has a soundtrack! And that soundtrack typically comprises Brazilian [...]
Going to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a must-do experience (see this site for Carnival dates and details), yet you can get a taste of Carnival or at least a carnivalesque atmosphere somewhere in Rio just about any day of the year. It’s simply a matter of finding the party – or serendipitously running into one, as [...]
One of the delights of going out and drinking in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is hitting the botecos or botequims – traditional, unpretentious neighbourhood bars. After a couple of weeks in the city we developed some favourites, the botecos and botequims we think are Rio's best neighbourhood bars. Lacking any kind of pretentions, these local bars range [...]
If you only take home one souvenir from Rio de Janeiro, make it swimwear – a pair of teensy Brazilian bikinis for her, and low-waist, hip-hugging, wide-brief sunga for him. In Ipanema, where we had our 'home away from home' in Rio for two weeks, there are countless swimwear shops with mannequins posing seductively in the chic [...]
Ask a Brazilian cook or chef who makes the best feijoada, Brazil’s national dish, and they’ll say “I do!” Nothing is more of a source of pride than making a delicious version of this pork and bean stew. Well, perhaps apart from making a mean caiparinha with their own supply of artisanal Cachaça! A [...]
“It’s going to be an interesting game tonight,” our guide Luis tells us with a grin, as he scans the score table and list of players he has on a sheet of paper in his hands. This is good news, because if you're going to watch football in Rio you want it to be interesting. We’re [...]
In our years of being semi-professional barflys and checking out bars, purely in the name of research of course, we’ve developed a repertoire of favourite cocktails that we always order to test out the skills of a barman. One of them is a Latin American classic so during our recent time in Rio de Janeiro [...]
Drinking a freshly-squeezed juice from one of Rio de Janeiro's juice bars, known locally as sucos bars is as much of a daily ritual for Cariocas as sipping coconut water beside the beach. There seems to be a juice bar on every block in Ipanema, their glass counters crammed with stunning displays of fruit and their [...]
We meet locals in many different ways when we travel. Sometimes the people we connect with are friends of friends, sometimes we meet them in restaurants or bars, occasionally we meet them through the owners of the places we’re staying, and at other times we connect through social media channels such as Twitter. That's how [...]
Okay, so not everyone can afford to sponsor a child or make a donation, but it costs very little to purchase a small souvenir. Here's our favela finds, great souvenirs to buy while touring the favelas. If you’re visiting Para Ti at Vila Canoas or Rocinha on a favela tour, you’ll have a chance to [...]