Rio City Tour- there’s more to this than beaches.

In the afternoon of our first day, we’d arranged to do an additional City Tour. This seemed a great idea by way of introducing us to the city. So Rachel and Raphael took us all around various parts of the city showing us some of the sites.

It turned out to be a great tour and included lots of the places I’d read about when researching our trip. How we’d ever have got to see all this on our own I don’t know. But Jane and I both agreed this was a brilliant decision,

Again the city surprised me…there are some really beautiful parts like Flamenco Park..reclaimed from the sea and now an exclusive district with green parks, an exclusive yacht harbour and fabulous views to SugarLoaf Mountain. Then there are some areas which had definitely seen better days…the so called ‘Cultural Corridor’ for example. An old commercial district where now all the shops have closed, the buildings are preserved because of their historical nature but now they’re left standing empty. Hm. But here also some buildings had been repurposed…the huge old Branco da Brazil is now a full on cultural centre. V impressive.

There were so many highlights on this trip and Rachel was an excellent guide judging well what we’d be most interested in (the huge pieces of record-breaking graffiti representing the 5 continents and produced by ‘ Kobra’ for the 2016 Olympics. ) and where our ears had stopped listening…

Amongst the highlights were the Sao Bento Monastery…home to the most ridiculous amount of baroque curly gold leaf and wood carving , the modern cathedral with its 4 stunning stained glass ‘windows’. The Sambadrome where the 12 best Samba schools get to parade at Carnival, the Cafe Colombo where we bought lunch, the Real Gabinete library and finally the crazy Selaron steps where in the 1990’s this dude decided to decorate the streets with ceramic tiles from all over the world. Now a big hit in Instagram!

By the end of the day we were loving this City and v v tired! Tomorrow we’re off to explore SugarLoaf Mountain. Can’t wait!