When our global grand tour project partners HomeAway asked us to include a Rio de Janeiro holiday rental apartment on our Grantourismo itinerary and stay at this cute Ipanema apartment, we jumped at the chance. Terence had never been to Rio de Janeiro and I was keen to return to show him ‘my’ Rio.
Movies and music brought me to Brazil and Rio de Janeiro the first time I visited for a month back in the mid-1990s. I’d come for a film festival and to research Brazilian film. I’d also hoped to see some Bossa Nova, a musical style I’d become a little obsessed by back home in Sydney for no reason other than it was sunny, sensual and seductive and I loved it.
Bossa Nova wasn’t the music of the movies I’d been watching in my university library – that was Tropicália – but the bright, sexy, gritty black and white images I’d been seeing on the big screen melded with the music to form the Rio de Janeiro of my imagination, a Rio de Janeiro I’d never really get to see that trip.
This time, on our global grand tour dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel, I had no expectations, and with two weeks to really scratch beneath the surface of the city, I hoped to experience the real Rio de Janeiro – not the Rio of my imagination.
Our Rio de Janeiro Holiday Rental Apartment – A Cute Ipanema Retreat
On that first trip to Rio de Janeiro by myself, I’d stayed in a windowless single room in a gloomy budget hotel on a Copacabana backstreet, nothing like our current adorable Rio de Janeiro holiday rental apartment.
I spent a lot of time sitting in traffic for hours to catch buses to and from different theatres for screenings, and spent days sitting in blackened cinemas from nine in the morning until almost midnight for most of the ten days of the film festival.
Despite the post-movie parties and socialising, the hotel, traffic and darkness conspired to depress me a little. At the end of the film festival, I found myself desperately in need of the sunshine and light I’d hoped to find in Rio de Janeiro.
I took a stroll to the end of Copacabana, through the then dodgy neighbourhood that connected Copacabana and Ipanema, to get to the beach. I could have walked a block to Copacabana’s famous crescent of sand, but it was full of tourists, touts and favela kids back then.
That meant I couldn’t take a swim unless I wanted to get out of the water to find my belongings gone. The hotel reception desk staff recommended I head for Ipanema beach instead. It was the locals’ favourite beach and it was much safer, he assured me.
I’d left my South American Handbook, the Latin American travel bible in those days, back in the hotel and didn’t have a map, instead deciding which way to walk based on what interested me. If a street lost my attention, I simply turned a corner and strolled down another.
Serendipitously, I found myself at 49 Vinícius de Moraes, the address of La Garota de Ipanema, the restaurant where Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes wrote the seductive song, The Girl from Ipanema. (If you don’t know it, watch this spellbinding performance by the gorgeous Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz in 1964.
I could hear the familiar tune wafting from the restaurant out onto the street before I even realised where I was. I lingered for a while, deciding whether to go in or not, but before I knew it the song had ended and the cobalt sea and waves crashing against the white sand a block away were just too tempting.
I lay on the beach drinking cold beer and eating the hot gooey cheese balls called bolinho de quejo, a popular drinking snack, which I bought from beach vendors, humming the song over and over again in my head. At last, I’d recreated the Rio of my imagination, even if it was only momentarily.
This trip to Rio de Janeiro, I didn’t form any expectations. I knew I wouldn’t find the Rio of my movies or music, which I hadn’t found (outside the cinema) the first time around, and the Rio of my imagination from that last trip had long since faded.
Our Ipanema Apartment Rental
After Nicky, the young English owner of our current home away from home in Brazil, opened the door to show us the minimalist two-bedroom holiday apartment in Ipanema that he had recently decorated, I knew we were about to experience a very different Rio de Janeiro. And what a great base to experience it from!
Our Rio de Janeiro apartment rental is located on the sixth floor of a characterful old building and is fitted out in a contemporary minimalist style that’s enlivened by vibrant local paintings on the walls that have an edgy street art feel to them, and arty touches, like hand stencilling.
Our cute Ipanema apartment has two spacious bedrooms with plenty of cupboard space for those who want to settle in for a while, and one bedroom with a cool albeit compact bathroom. There’s also a bigger bathroom off the hallway, as well as a laundry.
The kitchen may be small but it has a big fridge and a decent stove, and a basic supply of pots and pans, glasses and cutlery. It’s not a kitchen for foodies who intend practicing the Brazilian dishes they learn to make in their Rio cooking class.
But the kitchen is just fine for those who are planning to eat out in Ipanema most nights, and stay in for the occasional breakfast after a big night out, and perhaps mix some caipirinhas before heading out. (Update: and if you are, we have a caipirinha recipe for you.)
Our Rio apartment is light-filled and there are Rear Window views onto the apartments behind and in the evenings football matches and rock bands can be heard from the neighbouring pubs. No Bossa Nova unfortunately. But we would get to see some live Samba music at a local backstreet bar, an experience that would become one of the most memorable of the year.
The location smack-bang on Ipanema’s main drag, Rua Visconde di Piraja, is the apartment’s greatest asset. It’s surrounded by block after block of chic shops, loads of fantastic fresh juice bars, stylish restaurants, and lots of brilliant neighbourhood botecos (laidback local bars), all of which make it hard to leave Ipanema to explore the city beyond.
I would experience my first moment of déjà vu the first afternoon that we checked in, not long after we turned the corner and stumbled across La Garota de Ipanema, and beyond it a block away, La Praia de Ipanema — Ipanema Beach.
That we had ended up here all these years later was spooky. From the Google map on the website, I’d thought the property was a few blocks away. Happily, it was a short stroll to one of the world’s most entrancing beaches. Ipanema is a worthy match for Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach.
Aside from the colossal sign bearing the song’s lyrics that had been erected on the building exterior and a few framed press clippings inside, little had changed at La Garota de Ipanema. The restaurant was crowded with locals, drinking beer and eating sizzling steaks and mountains of French fries.
While the tune The Girl from Ipanema wasn’t wafting from the place, the guitar chords somehow still hung in the air.
