It’s impossible not to notice Rio’s favelas or shanty towns. You’ll see them tumbling down Rio’s hillsides from your plane, sprawling beside the expressway on the drive in from the airport, peeking between the elegant high-rises of Copacabana, and encroaching into the charming old neighbourhood of Santa Teresa. Perhaps surprisingly, in a city famous for … Read more
The coconut is to a Carioca* what the baguette is to a Parisian. Okay, well, not quite. Rio de Janeiro’s locals don’t cycle along Ipanema beach with a coconut under their arm, nor will you see them munching into one (ouch!) as they walk home from work. But like the baguette in Paris the coconut … Read more
One of the first things we do when we arrive at a new destination is explore our neighbourhood. Despite having done the long haul down to Rio de Janeiro from Costa Rica via Miami, it didn’t take us long to get out the door and down to the famous Ipanema beach. Our Ipanema apartment is … Read more
This is our Rio de Janeiro shopping list, the latest in our Price Check* series. Rio de Janeiro is on par with Europe when it comes to shopping and is no longer the budget destination it once was when I visited a long time ago – at a time when Brazil’s famously fashionable Havaiana flip flops … Read more
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 … Read more