Brazil – Adventures in Rio – Part 2 of 3

During our holiday in Rio – the fourth, fifth and sixth days of our trip was a mix of walking tours, shopping and excursions.

After a day at the beach in Copacabana, we spent the next day with a Rio walking tour (free, but it’s customary to tip at the end).

If you travel to a new city, I highly suggest you see if they have free walking tours. We personally love free walking tours for multiple reasons – the first is that it’s FREE (though you should really tips something)!, the quality of the tour is generally good (since they are working on word of mouth usually), and finally it gives you a small sampling of all the main attractions of a city, so you can decide on your own later if you want to explore or venture out more.

This particular day it was raining, but that didn’t stop us from having a great time! The tour took us everywhere from the famous Escadaria Selarón 

to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian

and Theatro Municipal,

all while our guide gave us tons of information not only at the sights, but as we walked as well.

After our tour was done, we wandered around the streets and went for a late lunch at Acarajé da Baiana Rose in Centro for an amazing stuffed food.

We then took the famous Yellow Tram for a quick ride, drank some delicious coffee and went back to our area in Santa Teresa for dinner and drinks!

Our fifth day was much more mellow. We went shopping, and caught a movie (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) at the mall’s theatre.

We ended up dining at Fogo de Chao, a churrasqueira that ended up being a massive disappointment.

The steak selection was ok, the buffet portion was ok, but it was overpriced, and I’ve honestly had better in my hometown of Toronto. Even Sophia went a week earlier to a fantastic churrascaria in Sao Paolo that was a quarter of the price and had apparently fantastic food! I should of expected at a tourist area to pay more for the food, but I was really disappointed in the quality.

They can’t all be winners I guess!

Day six was an all day tour to Petrópolis (also known as the “Imperial City”), a town outside of Rio that gave Sophia and I a chance to get away from Rio during our stay.

Full of history and with a certain “European-German” architecture to it, a visit to Petrópolis is a visit into fascinating history of the former monarchy in Brazil.

We spent a few hours touring the Imperial Museum, where we viewed paintings, carriages, clothing, and items from the Imperial period of Brazil.

Next we had a quick lunch at a local restaurant, before going to the Crystal Palace and walking the surround grounds.

Finally, we boarded the bus and headed back to our accommodations – which ended up being the worst part of the entire day! A 2 hour car drive ended up taking 5 hours. Traffic jams, dropping people off out of order (i.e. going back and forth between streets).  It was horrible – and unfortunately overshadowed the rest of the day we had. Nevertheless, the visit was great, BUT the tour bus was not!