All About Rio
Rio is everything and much more!
(Luiz Caversan – Folha de São Paulo)
Redundant to be here saying beautiful speeches about the beaches, the sea, the pure air, the blue sky, the magnificent mirror of the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, the Christ up there taking care of everything, the Sugarloaf Mountain, imposing and always presently, saying, yes, it is right here that the beauty of Brazil lives.
Would really like to say how good is to spend a long holiday in Rio. Do you know why? The most incredible fact is because, a great part of the “Cariocas” get out of the city and leave all that beauty to the ones that arrive disposed to enjoy one of the biggest whims of the Creator.
If you are coming to Rio for vacation, or if will be there for at least a weekend, do not be astonished with so much beauty. Be planned only and follow these ten hints:
1. Walk by the avenue at seaside on a weekend or a holiday. From Leblon to the end of Copacabana, it is a great, harmonious, delicious coming and going of people of all type, who uses the absence of traffic (the cars are prohibited to circulate in the bank sea in these days), in a “jogging” that became one of the spaces more democratic that I could ever see and enjoy in my life.
2. Go to the beach, any of them, preferably Ipanema/Leblon , where you catch sight of the almost
exciting magnificence of the Two Brothers hill (get information on the conditions of the water before entering in the sea; if it will be vetoed for the bath, doesn’t matter: sunbathe and then get wet in one of the several existent posts of rescue along the border).
3. On Saturday, Sunday or when on vacation, rent a car, contract a taxi (negotiate enough) or plead from a friend and go to the Paineiras. It is a little and lovely road that goes round the slope of the set Corcovado/Sumaré, where you can see the whole Southern District of the city, inclusive and principally the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon and the Botanical Garden, while you walk on foot under the shadow of typical trees of the Atlantic forest. With luck, you will see a monkey-nail or a Capuchin monkey with his cub; butterflies and birdies are of surplus. The car is parked near to the rise of Redeeming Christ while you delight and exercise your coronaries. Oh, go with bathing suit under your Bermuda , because there are at least three delicious water falls for bathing.
4. If you go to the Botanical Garden, just walk along the avenue of the imperials palms trees and visit the nursery of bromélias and will have already guaranteed the well-being for the next whole week. But do not be only in that: walk, investigate all the wonders of one of the prettiest botanical gardens of the world, creation of Dom João , the 6th, which got more and more dazzling since then.
5. Go for a walk in the trail that goes round the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon. The turn around has 7 km long, but do not need so much. Choose one side, preferably the side of Ipanema, which is of 
where you have the best sight of the Tijuca Forest (where Paineiras , the Christ and the Botanical Garden is located).
6. If you will be disposed to face lines and bunch of people, go to the Sugarloaf Mountain and to Redeeming Christ. When you arrive up there you will think that the effort was worthwhile: it is two of the most exciting views that is possible to have of a metropolis, at least for the one who does not think that only exist Paris and New York in the world.
7. In one of the cornes of the square where the Sugarloaf cable car leaves, at Praia Vermelha, there is an army school. Beside this school begins the trail Cláudio Coutinho where the soldiers of the Army used to run and today is opened to the public. It is located in the slope of the Sugarloaf Mountain, between the gigantic rock and the sea. It is amazing and unique.
8. Rio has the best beach fashion of the country. It can be found in the most stylish shopping center of the city (São Conrado Fashion Mall, in São Conrado) or in many shops of many existing galleries in Ipanema and Leblon. Go for a walk on the Visconde de Pirajá street around nº 500. Get in the galleries, go up to the mezzanines and you will be surprised with everything you will 
find which is not seen easily in other cities. In Leblon, you have to stop by Rio Design Center, which is in the ground level floor of an immense round apart-hotel with black glasses, there, you will find very good shops of furniture and objects – national and imported - and every Sunday there is a market of antiques in the corridors .
9. Find a Carioca friend and ask him to take you to Lapa. There you find since the “raves” of the Fudição Progresso ( tecno music for the night completely) up to the samba of the Carioca da Gema, passing by an infinity of bars and rhythms, in a scenery that sometimes remembers the colonial Brazil, and in other times Getúlio Vargas . The modern eras are also present, and you better, not to go there alone.
10. This small roll of hints does not bring any address just for you to exercise one of the things 
the “Cariocas” like to do most: to talk. So, when you decide to go to some of the mentioned places, just ask. In the hotel, on the streets, on the beach,on the kiosk of fresh coconut, on the bar at the corner, or to a passer-by. In general, the people adores to give detailed information . Do not completely trust the taxi-drivers, as in any place in the world, but be sure that if there is a place in which the old brazilian cordiality and hospitality still survive , this place is Rio de Janeiro.
Visitors
