Rio de Janeiro

Quick Tips:

One thing to note is that I couldn't get any of my ATM cards to work in the local bank machines; in the end, I got a cash advance on my credit card from Citibank in Ipanema, although my hotel would probably have done the same thing.

Best Way To Get Around:

Most of the people who take buses in Rio are young people without cars. If I had stayed longer, I would have liked to have gotten to some of the surrounding towns and out into the countryside from the central bus station. The bus trip to Barra de Tijuca is a long but interesting one. It goes through a tunnel after Leblon, then past Sao Conrado, where they hang glide from the cliffs, and finally out into the great suburban traffic.

There were a lot of MTV type shows with blond carioca hosts and German last names, and dubbed American movies. Brazil has quite an interesting history of immigration from various parts of Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, which explains the mix of people. It was fun turning on the closed captioning on the cable tv, following along the subtitles, and figuring out Portuguese slang words.

There's a great, free all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet on the rooftop restaurant of the Debret, and filling up on this could keep me going for most of the day. There was an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner up there in the evening, which was also good and only about five dollars. Brazilian beef tasted really excellent for some reason, maybe it's all free range. Overall, I thought the service was good at the Debret, and the prices were quite inexpensive for what you got.

The buses run along the commercial streets behind the Debret, where there are also supermarkets and restaurants. I would generally get a bottle of water at one of the supermarkets, and carry it around in my backpack. There are buffets in the food courts of the shopping malls which are also quite good.

I also spent a part of one day walking the path along the water that you see in the first picture. There are some very nice neighborhoods around that part of Rio. Another day, I took the metro into the center of the city, the business district. Boy, was it crowded at lunch time, just like Manhattan.

There are also several huge air conditioned shopping centers in the Barra da Tijuca, and you can go there to escape the heat. There's a lot of real estate development going on in the Barra da Tijuca, and it would seem like a nice place to live if I ever decided to move to Rio.

I also visited the Botanic Gardens, which are somewhere northwest close to Ipanema.