Sofitel Rio de Janeiro

... in the apartment and nervously walked along the beach to the restaurant we had picked, the Za Za Bistro. We stayed on the side of the street with the buildings and security guards, amazed by all the gates, police, cars with tinted windows and the general state of watchfulness.<br><br>The Za Za Bistro was perfect. We sat on the outdoor patio, which had colored lights and white painted metal work. The general decor was slightly Indian, and upstairs the ...

... drinking session (u would be proud ollie), an epic plane journey, beaut rave boat and tucked into bed ...

... We moved onto the carnival square - where we checked out carnival costumes and discovered that carnival seats on the spectator benches sold for about 1000 Reals - roughly £800 a pop! We were gutted at missing it, but the Rio carnival will have to wait for another visit. We moved onto the Cilian cathedral - a beautiful building shaped in a pyramid style, with long stained glass windows running up and down the height of each face. Our next stop was an interesting set of steps, set in ...

... taking and an ever present feature of life in Rio). The area surrounding it is the largest urban forest in the world, consists of 200,000 trees planted by 6 slaves over a period of 13 years! The statue itself was carved by stone masons in France a brought over piece by piece. The statue itself has been there for about 80 years! Second stop was the Maracana Stadium which hosted a world cup final. Its quite big but we didn´t go in, cause it was ...

... were offered cake, which we gladly accepted. The birthday girl spoke English and was in a band that was playing at Rio Scenarium the next night. Her friends were all so nice and told us we needed to come back to see the band. We promised we would, but as it turned out, we got there a little late and the line was way too long. The next day, we wanted to ride the "bonde" or cable car that rides atop an aqueduct from the Centro, atop Lapa, and then ends ...

... is een betonnen stadium/straat van 700 meter lang en het schijnt het veiligste stukje van Zuid Amerika te zijn, er was enorm veel beveiliging. Helaas niet op het stukje waar wij moesten lopen om erin te komen, we waren namelijk aan de verkeerde kant uit de metro gestapt en dan moet je dus dwars door een favela heen lopen om bij de juiste ingang te komen. Zelfs de twee Braziliaanse die wij bij ons hadden, vonden het erg spannend. Maar we hadden onze beschermengeltjes ...

... the fog never cleared. We continued our exploration of the city by heading next to the less safe, but edgier neighborhood of Lapa (New Yorkers: think Williamsburg pre-pre-pre-gentrification). There we walked up the 215 tile-covered steps of the Escadaria Selaron. The steps are the work of artist Jorge Selaron, who started this local art project by attaching tiles he had hand-painted, many of which contain political and ...

... some reason?!<br><br> <br><br>We were shown the photos from the glider (I only had 8 photos and Katie had 13, so much for 25 photos each!) but there were a few good ones so we handed over the money, paid off the balance of the gliding itself and got back in the taxi for the ride back ...

... I didn't know, but I figured he's a professional. So with my ten minute instruction on how to run, not jump, I got ready to fly. I decided they only give you ten minutes because any more time than that and people would be jumping back into the vans they came in rather than off the mountain. I read something that in its origins back in the '70's, 1 of every 2000 jumps ended in death. Yikes. Now it's around 1 in 116,000. Twice as deadly as scuba diving, which I never really ...