Rio de Janeiro

After a express transfer from Ilha Grande to Rio de Janeiro, that was supposed to take 2,5 hours but took 5 hours, we arrived in our Hostel in Copacabana at night time. The next day we started with a really good free city tour (tip based) through the city centre of Rio. To be honest the centre is neither very pretty nor very interesting, but the tour guide made it still quite good telling us funny bits of the history.

Headquarters of Petrobras

Confeitaria Colombo

Teatro Municipal

Lapa

Escadaria Selarón

Escadaria Selarón, also known as the 'Selaron Steps', is this set of world-famous steps in Rio de Janeiro. They are the work of Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón who claimed it as "my tribute to the Brazilian people". There are 250 steps measuring 125 metres long which are covered in over 2000 tiles collected from over 60 countries around the world. Originally, tiles for the work were scavenged from various construction sites and piles of urban waste found on the Rio streets. But in later years most of the tiles were donated by visitors from all around the world. We even saw tiles from Australia, Hamburg, Wiesbaden and Langenlohnsheim :-D.

The real beauty of Rio is the coast line with it's islands and high mountains.

Sugar loaf

Statue of Jesus

We walked up the Morro de Urca which is the hill in front of the sugar loaf. From here we had a perfect view for the sun set over the famous statue of Jesus on one side and the sugar loaf on the other side.

The next day was really nice and sunny again and we decided to see a bit more of the northern part of the city. First be bumped into the really nice park Quinta da Boa Vista. Because it was Sunday, the park was full of family having picnics in the shade and people selling all sorts of stuff and foods on the street. We followed the flow of the masses and ended up in the zoo.

After the zoo we went to the Feira de São Cristovão just around the corner. It's the centre for tradition of the north-east of Brazil. It's full of stands and shops that sell foods, arts and crafts, musical instruments and much more from that region. There also were stages with music and dance shows.

We had a typically currasco (barbeque) for lunch. It was really good and really filling :-)

They serve the different types of meat chopped up together with rice, hot chips, fried manioc, a salad with tomato and onion and farofa (manioc flour with bacon bits in it).

We went back through the park Quinta da Boa Vista and took the metro to the most famous beaches of Rio.

Copacabana:

Ipanema:

There we watched the sun set and of course drank a real Brazilian caipirinha ;-)

For the next day we had a flight to Ilhéus in Bahia a bit further up the coast. The domestic airport is right in the city centre, so from there we had a really good view of the Jesus statue and when the plane left, it made a circle over the city. Just perfect!