On Tuesday, our second full day, we took a minibus tour around to see some of the main sights (I'll namecheck it as I couldn't find a single mention using google - an Inside Rio tour). Decent value by the time you work out how much you would have paid to go up mountains, etc, and makes life a lot easier than trying to work out which city buses to take - and all the stops on the tour were worthwhile. We had a small group, just a Japanese couple, a Croat and a Frenchman. Strangely the Croatian and French guys took photos of everything, far more photos than the Japanese which goes against all stereotypes and indeed our experience; but the Japanese couple struck yoga poses in their photos, which was fun to watch.
The highlight was probably Christo Redentor, 'Christ the Redeemer', the iconic statue high above Rio. The view are fabulous, and I highly recommend doing this on your first clear day in Rio as you get a great overview - literally - of the city. Unfortunately Christ is having his 10-yearly maintenance, covered in scaffolding (in the shape of a cross, which amused me given the statue's arms-extended pose). Normally you can see him clearly from a lot of Rio; at the moment it depends on the angle and light as to whether he looks like a man or a box. Up close you can't see too much - the scaffolding over his face has been covered by a painting of his face, as with the current style for scaffolding on famous buildings, but you can't see this from a distance and up close the angle doesn't really work - we were amused to see a guy's legs dangling between the actual chin and the picture of the face. Anyway, you come up here for the views and Christ ain't in them anyway, he's behind you when you're taking your photos. We've had great weather in Rio so far, scorching most days, and it was a fabulously clear day so perfect for this.
On our way up, and down, we saw some evidence of the recent mudslides that killed so many people here, but mostly it's been cleared up now - you wouldn't know, if you hadn't seen the news. Access to Christ was temporarily cut off as a result - really glad it got fixed in time for us to go up there.
The other great view of the day is from the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain, sticking out into the bay and reached via two cable cars. We came here for sunset, and again it's great - not as high as Christ, but a superb view back over Rio, and very nice as the sun sets.
In between we took in a display of famous footprints at the Maracana (the huge national football stadium - we plan to be back here for a match on Sunday); and then the heart of Brazil's Carnaval, Sambadrome - we hadn't realised that the key bit of Carneval is a slow parade, past what looks like a road with many blocks of seating along one side, by each of Rio's samba schools in turn. The rest of the year, it's just slightly sad-looking concrete blocks of seats. But at the end is a little building which inducts favela kids into samba, and for a small fee to this good cause you can try on some of last year's outfits, as Lilly did - photos to follow.
One more stop on the tour was the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, one of Oscar Niemeyer's famous works (see Sao Paulo blog). This should be a disaster, a modernist building in unorthodox shape like an overturned octagonal plantpot with a cavernous interior. But inside it's actually brilliant, four huge modern stained glass windows converging to make a small glass cross in the ceiling.
We're staying near Copacabana beach (slightly less cool than Ipanema, but accommodation is easier to find). It's quite high-rise around here - hard to tell whether it's sunny until you actually go outside, because not enough sunlight makes its way inside. The beaches look great, of course, long strips of golden sand separated from hotels and shops and residences only by a dual carriageway (which has funny tiny petrol stations in the central reservation) - it's normal to see people walking through the city in just their swimming cossies. The beaches are also well equipped with volleyball courts (though they seem to be more used for football-style volleyball than conventional rules - it is Brazil, after all) and dozens of little open air bars.
Other scenic features include a large lagoon (with a little island that appears to be taken up by a swanky health club), and spacious botanic gardens (no monkeys sighted even on Monkey River, disappointingly, but some fun cacti).
Lilly was pleased to find that Rio also does malls well, most of which include cinemas - we took the chance to catch the enjoyable Iron Man 2. We were pleased to find that most American films here are subtitled rather than dubbed, although there was a dodgy moment when characters spoke Russian and the English subtitles were missing, so we had the choice of hearing the Russian version or reading the Portuguese subtitles... Fortunately this didn't seem critical, and a couple of hours of air conditioning were very welcome after a long day walking too far in Rio. We're enjoying ourselves and will be here for a week before flying to Peru, so more to follow.
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