Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro, a cidade maravilhosa (the wonderful city) as some Brazilians called, is the second biggest city in Brazil, the biggest is Sao Paulo, and Rio is also the most popular city of the country. Rio is indeed a beautiful and interesting city to visit with many attractions during day and night with its many beaches, parties, bars and clubs. Although Rio has a great number of beaches that are sought after by tourists, Copacabana is the most well known beach of Rio and Brazil, and has the biggest New Year's celebration in the world, this last celebration for example brought together over two million people on the beach.

Copacabana beach New Year's celebration

If you like parties and going out to night clubs, Rio de Janeiro is definitely a good place to spend some time during a vacation. There are a good variety of places to go at night where you can have since a good snack to a high end restaurants with world famous chefs. The music also depends what you like more, in Rio the most popular genres are Samba, Pagode, Sertanejo, Axé and Funk (Funk from Rio has nothing to do with American Funk, besides the name), I particularly like all of them depending of the occasion I am in. If you do not like the rhythm at least you will have fun dancing or trying to dance with Brazilians. Also, you probably have heard about Brazilian Carnaval the biggest street event in the world that usually happens every February, this is a great opportunity to have fun as well; it is a four-day event, it also brought thousands of tourists every year that want to participate of the street party, or a more fancy opportunity is to watch a closed parade in a kind of stadium.

During the day, besides going to the beaches and get some tan in the really hot weather from Rio, we can benefit with the heavenly views Rio has to offer from its hills. The two most common places are the Pão de Açucar which consists in two close hills that have a cable car among them and of course the Christ.

Christ the Redeemer - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In 2007, Christ the Redeemer was chosen one of the seven wonders of the modern world. It was constructed among the years 1922 and 1931, when it was established. Nowadays can be considered the main symbol of Brazil, considering this is the only thing many people can think when it comes the subject Brazil. Said that you might be thinking how wonderful and beautiful Rio is, however we only talked about the good parts of Rio until this point.

Violence, crimes, thieves, shots, favelas (slums), danger! Rio is beautiful, but is also full of violence. 

Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Unfortunately that is a point you need to be aware of. Rio is one of the most dangerous cities in Brazil, has over 10,000 slums and as the rest of the country has a big social inequality, which helps to increase the quantity of crimes. That does not mean that you are going there and you are going to be shot, however while in Rio please be aware of certain things as people around you, your cell phone/camera, purse, wallets, everything expensive or easy to be stolen needs to be well kept, otherwise you are going to lose it. We do not want to spend much time talking about it however, so as a big hint keep your stuff (all of it) with you all the time, stay alert, and everything is going to be fine, then you can have fun enjoying the good part of the city.

To conclude, how about talking about the cariocas? Cariocas is the title of people who were born in Rio. They are very happy, as any other Brazilian (see last post Happy Brazilians) but these guys know how to party better than others. You will notice it right in the moment you arrive there. They have their own particular accent that differs from any other place in the country and a whole bunch of slang they created. Having fun around them is guaranteed. Remember to be aware of the things we have talked earlier and you will have a nice and fun trip going there.