Our first three days in Rio de Janeiro!

Note: I still have to write about our fabulous time on the beach in Ubatuba … but my not-so-fabulous iPhone decided to eat it and all the pictures are on there so I’m going to wait and see if they can be recovered before writing about that. For now, we are skipping forward to our first three days in Rio de Janeiro!

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We made it to Rio, woohoo! I think Rio de Janeiro is the city that first comes to mind when people think of Brasil – the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, Maracana Stadium, the Olympics, etc. I was pretty excited to have a week to explore all that this city, where forest meets ocean, has to offer.

We went about exploring Rio the way we do most other cities – perusing guidebooks, blogs, travel forums, etc. and writing it out on a map and then picking “anchor spots” and planning around those. The first thing that I realized is that Rio feels much smaller than São Paulo. In reality the total municipality is still about 60% of the size of SP and Rio has a population of ~7.5mm, so it’s not tiny at all but perhaps it’s because the places where travelers would go are in a more compact area.

We arrived to Rio on Thursday evening, after a long 5+ hour drive from Ubatuba. We settled into our AirbnB, which is on the border of Ipanema and Copacabana and had a low key night and fell asleep early. I have been fighting some allergies and/or a minor cold so we’ve definitely taken it easy the last few days, but I feel like it’s still been pretty packed with fun!

On Friday we started by walking Ipanema beach. I’m sure many have heard of it from the Tom Jobim song “The Girl from Ipanema” and the beach definitely lived up to its reputation. It was filled with lots of cariocas (aka people from Rio) enjoying the day – whether tanning, swimming, playing futevolei (basically volleyball using everything except your hands), hanging out, etc etc. It must be so neat to be able to live in a city and have a beach at your fingertips anytime you want.

We also went to Arpoador, which is a tiny little rock peninsula that is between Ipanema and Copacabana. It’s a short climb up to the top but then there are gorgeous views (apparently it is a hot spot in terms of where to watch the sunset in Rio – the sun sets between/near the two close-to-each-other mountain tops you can see in the second picture below, which are called the two brothers). The only sad thing about this place is that because it has such great views it has a ton of people who visit it who don’t always treat it right – there were spots that smelled like urine, places where folks didn’t pick up their dog’s poop and beautiful cacti which people had defaced by carving names, etc. into them. But, it was still worth it!

After that we walked to the other end of Ipanema (to the end connecting to Leblon) and browsed the street vendors along the way. Our favorite was a guy who goes by Lata Vira Arte (which means cans become art). He cuts the bottom out of coke cans and then paints beautiful landscapes of Rio in mini on them. We bought a magnet from him and then kept on our walk.

We ended up at a lovely tapas restaurant called Venga, which is a couple streets in from the beach in Ipanema. While the outside looks slightly cheesy with a neon backlit sign, the inside was super cute and the food was super delicious. It actually reminded us a lot of our favorite tapas restaurant in NYC, Boqueria, and the vegetarian paella was especially yummy. We then went home and hit the sack (after I made Damian watch the Lindsay Lohan version of Freaky Friday, muahahaha).

We woke up on Saturday with a plan, and I’d say we were moderately successful 🙂 The first part of our plan was to head to the area near Rio’s botanical garden, grab a late lunch and then go to the garden. We started by stopping by a little spot called Chico & Alaíde, which looked super yummy but they had Pepsi instead of Coke and I just wasn’t in the mood for that situation. So, we ended up walking down the street to CT Boucherie, which was highly recommended, and man were the people right. Basically at this restaurant you order a main and then the sides are all you can eat. Damian got a steak and I got a breaded oven-cooked white fish and they were great, but the sides were greeeeeeat. We had mashed potatoes and broccolini and roasted veggies and quinoa risotto and the best squash ever and beet salad and rice with veggies and more and more and more. Below is the before, during and after of how Damian felt. I’m surprised we could still walk after leaving that place!

After eating we went to the Rio de Janeiro botanical garden. I’ve been to botanical gardens in a bunch of places and usually I am meh, neither here nor there (except for Keukenhof flower garden outside of Amsterdam!), but the Rio botanical gardens were amazing. The gardens were just so well laid out, with symmetry and geometry and angles taken well into account. They had an awesome map that was easy to follow, there were little greenhouses to go inside with plants that are carnivorous, or usually in more dry climates, and the vistas were just stunning. And I mean, how cute is the little yellow building that houses the administration for the park? Can I AirBnB that please?

A big highlight of the trip to the the gardens was seeing wild capybaras! I had never heard about capybaras until a few years ago, but they are the biggest rodents in the world. The ones we saw were the size of a large pig, but they were totally docile and not really interested in us at all. They were eating lots and lots of grass and just doing their own thing. At the end of the day I guess they were pretty cute but you can see my reaction was not so strong when Damian was trying to get me to inch closer and closer to them!

After the botanical gardens we had grand plans to try to go to the Flamengo soccer game at Maracana stadium. It was going to be great – Saturday night, a local team with big fandom, a retiring player, etc. etc. Well, that plan was a total bust. We got to the stadium, waited in a 40-minute line to buy tickets and then got to the front and they only accepted cash. Whomp, whomp. I’m going to write a longer post about our overall Maracana experience, so stay tuned for that!

So, after plan A fell through we decided to go to what is always our backup plan B, clubbing (hahaha, I am literally laughing out loud writing that, we never go clubbing). We headed to Rio Scentarium, which is a (little bit strange) combination of antique museum, art gallery, samba hall, dance club, restaurant and bar. It has a reputation as one of the places to go out in Rio, so we though, well, might as well make the most of the night! We showed up at 8pm (don’t laugh, doors hadn’t even opened yet!) and, well, yes, it was a strange place. But, we had a lot of fun drinking a bottle of champagne, dancing, making silly videos using instagram filters and just being our goofy selves. We didn’t really document the night super well (even though we stayed out until 1am, woot woot!), but here’s an example of one of the (more tame) walls inside of the place. What was neat about it is that there are three floors with tables so people can sit and eat, but also different spaces so there is a samba band playing in the main area but then also a separate space with a DJ who is spinning “pop” music. All in all it was weird but a blast!

And then the final day for this wrap-up is Sunday. There was another game at Maracana stadium, this time with Fluminese Football Club playing at 4pm. So we headed to Maracana around 1pm (this time with cash in hand!) and bought our tickets. We then headed to the area near Olympic Boulevard for lunch. We ate at a place called Mironga and once we were inside we really could have been in Brooklyn! It had a cute hipster vibe and we split the cod croquettes and the burger, both of which were delicious! We then headed out to find another piece of art from my main street art man, Eduardo Kobra.

Before we got there we walked past an area that was revitalized for the recent Olympics in Rio. On this day there was a large stage and they were setting up for a free public concert with local bands and DJs. It was a really interesting part of town, because on one side of the street all of the buildings, sidewalks, etc. had been fixed up but then on the other side of the street almost all of the buildings were abandoned, with windows broken and in a general state of disrepair. We kept saying how a developer could (and should) come in and turn the abandoned buildings into lofts for commercial or residential use – it would be such a cool area for that. But, until then, the street art still continues to impress!

Ok, so now to come to my main man Kobra. I’ll put more details in when I make a post specifically about all his artwork we saw, but just for a quick overview here – this is a huge mural that Kobra and his team made before the Rio Olympics in 2016, and it actually holds the record for the largest mural in the world. You can find more information about it here, but what I love most is the message it was built upon. Kobra has painted the faces of indigenous people from the five main areas of the world to show that we all descend from common ancestors and are all deeply interconnected as a human race. I mean, how awesome is that as an idea and then as a way to visualize it?

Finally, to end our day today we headed to Maracana Stadium to watch the Fluminense match! Even though Maracana stadium holds about 70,000 people, there were only 10,000 people at this match, but their dedication and energy were electric! As a sports business Professor my mind was in overdrive identifying the differences and similarities between this sporting experience and those in the US and trying to figure out the root causes of those differences and similarities. I’ll write more about that in another, more in depth post, but until then it was neat to see such an iconic stadium (which has recently held the FIFA World Cup Finals and the Olympics) and to be up close and personal with the proud fans of this team.

Well phew, I guess we did do quite a lot during our first 3 days in Rio! During the rest of our time here we will be visiting the Christ the Redeemer Statue, heading up Sugarloaf mountain, doing some whatever-comes-our-way activities AND finally doing our first volunteering gig, woohoo! This whole traveling thing really is the best!

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Read more about our time in Brazil using the links below:

• Brazil Country Recap – What we loved (and didn’t love) in our six weeks there
• Iguazu Falls
• Exploring São Paulo
• Exploring Bonito
• Touring in Bonito (river snorkeling and waterfall hiking)
• Rio de Janeiro: Our first three days in Rio (you are here!)
• Rio de Janeiro: “Professor-ial” thoughts on attending a game at Maracana
• Rio de Janeiro: Volunteering with Project Favela
• Three days in the beach paradies of Ubatuba!
• Rio de Janeiro: Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain
• The amazing landscape of Lençóis Maranhenses
• Three days in the hippie beach town of Jericoacoara
• Why we had to skip Canoa Quebrada and go to Natal instead
• Six days in Praia da Pipa (my favorite beach town)
• 24 hours in Olinda