Day Six - Rio

Anything you may have heard about Rio de Janeiro is absolutely true. As far as cities go, it’s really all that. Beaches, stores, nightclubs, restaurants and fancy hotels placed in a setting of unimaginable natural beauty, imbued in a rich musical and arts tradition, and then plenty of poverty, misery and crime to strike a counterpoint lest you be tempted to think that you’ve landed in paradise. Rio has captivated me since my first visit as a kid and I’ve never gotten over it. Fortunately, Lauren loves it as well and we go back whenever we can.

Apartment in Copacabana
We stayed in an apartment on Rua Domingos Ferreira, a short block inland in Copacabana, a beautiful crescent-shaped beach neighborhood (see the picture to the right).
The beach-front promenade is Avenida Atlântica, which has a distinctive wave pattern to its mosaic sidewalks. I know the neighborhood well because it turns out we were two blocks away from my apartment when I went to school at PUC, Rio’s Catholic university. It was probably the best possible location for a tourist since everything was at our doorstep, including a phenomenal wine store downstairs, a laundry service across the street that does wash/dry/fold, easy access to every bus line in the city, 24 hour grocery stores, the Marriott Hotel around the corner (to change money without a fee), and a pirate-themed candy store vied with the “Sorvete Itália” ice cream shop for our favorite.

The first day in Rio was overcast and drizzly, but not at all cold. Not very promising for being on such a beautiful beach, but our first order of business was to go straight to the beach. I couldn’t wait to show the kids the wave-pattern mosaic sidewalks and the stunning half-moon shape of the beach. They were not wowed by the sidewalk, and they thought the stunning vistas of the mountains jutting out of the sea and squeezing the city up against the water was “okay, dad.”
But what were really cool were the green coconuts that the vendors would hack open with a machete and offer up cold with a straw in it! We strolled along the beach for a bit and then headed back to the apartment and decided to head to Niterói (the city across the bay from Rio).

Downtown and Niterói
To get there, we made our way to the docks of Praça XV and the ferries across the bay. We stopped for lunch at a run-of-the-mill lunch counter (“botequim”) near the docks and had a quick bite to eat with the dock workers. I ordered some pastel de galinha (chicken fritters) and empadinhas de galinha (little chicken pot pies) and a small plate of black beans & rice, and the kids declared it “the best meal we’ve had yet in Brazil.” What’s funny is how scandalized my Brazilian friends were when I recounted to them where we decided to stop for lunch, only to be topped by their howls of laughter when I then told them we took the ferries to Niterói. Cariocas (natives of Rio) cannot understand why anyone would go to Niterói (much less an American tourist), since they think “the only thing good there is the view of Rio.”

Museu de Arte Contemporânea
Anyway, the view of Rio from Niterói is actually stunning, but it’s also the site of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Museu de Arte Contemporânea, which looks like a flying saucer perched on a craggy bluff jutting out into the bay. It’s a small museum and much of the art on display seemed to be inspired by or spoke to the turmoil Brazil experienced during the most recent miliary dictatorship (1964 – 1985). The overall design and the interior spaces made the entire building itself a work of art, and they even had some interactive exhibits displayed at a kid-friendly level.

Santa Teresa
We decided to walk back to the docks from the museum for some exercise (to count toward a later treat at Sorvete Itália) and we headed back to Rio on the ferry. By that point it was rush hour on Friday and Praça XV is in the middle of downtown, so we could either fight the traffic to get back to the apartment or find something to do downtown. We opted for the latter and decided to make our way to Santa Teresa, a hilly, bohemian neighborhood right near downtown accessible via the last remaining tram line in the city (the “bondinho de Santa Teresa”). The rickety old trams are long on charm and have side-runners and external handles that some younger dudes were hanging off of as we made the steep ascent into the neighborhood and over the Arcos da Lapa (see picture above that I found on the Internet). Some of the shops were open and we browsed through their wares as our appetites increased so we went in search of food. Once we realized that we probably would make it back to Copacabana too late for Sorvete Itália, we let a quest for ice cream guide our choice of restaurant, settling on a quaint bistro called Manga Jasmim, which offered a respectable ice cream sundae.

The Metrô – The Neat and Orderly Rio
We headed back to Copacabana on the metrô to avoid the traffic. One of my college professors and fellow Brazil-phile, Werner Baer, used to joke that the metrô is the only place in Rio that’s neat and orderly because it is a source of civic pride for Cariocas to have a subway (like São Paulo and all the other big cities in the world). I passed that observation along to the kids, and it turns out that the Cariocas did not disappoint me. All the lines were orderly and there was no trash whatsoever to be seen anywhere down there. Before we knew it, we were taking the escalator up to Copacabana feeling calm and refreshed. It was a nice alternative to the rough-and-tumble buses and the sobriety checkpoints.

We stopped at the grocery store to get some staples (which includes peanut butter in our house)and we were amazed at the variety and quality we saw on the shelves (a big departure from Brazil in years past). We saw scores of specialty items, like 8 varieties of cheese fondue, an olive & cheese bar, two kinds of maple syrup, imported wines and even a brand of paper towels called “Snob.” Based on our paper towel choice, we were able to clean up spills in the kitchen and feel smug about probably having paid too much for the paper towels.