Leblon lovelies
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2006
1
31
33
Trip End
Sep 04, 2006
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Monday, August 14, 2006
Brazil, it seemed, was turning out to be the equivalent of a warm apple strudel, served straight from the oven of a competitively priced pie shop. Hot & cheap.
SIMON: Forget Buenos Aires dubious claims, Rio really is a sexy city, although none the richer in this regard for the arrival of my milky little cigarette stub legs
1 Leblon in the daytime.
. The skin tones of the European inhabitants is really quite intimidating to those such as I who are blessed with a semi permanent 'English tan'. Its like Essex after a 70% off sale in a Chigwell solarium.Still, booking into a quite swanky hotel (a budget-busting $180 swanky, that is) made my tomato-coloured face a mask more manageable. The great trick of booking into the only 27 floor high hotel means that you get fantastic views from your ocean view room, rooftop bar or whatever without having your vista ruined by having to look at the crime against architecture in which you reside.
Eschewing the dubious delights of Copacanbana, we elected to stay in the reputedly far more upper class Leblon area, these two districts sandwiching Ipanema. To be perfectly honest, we expected it to be a bit tacky, dirty and cheap looking, but we were delighted by how pleasant Leblon is. Leafy boulevards, smart shops and trendy restaurants - the tidy economics of Ali's haggling skills in Florianopolis would prove invaluable here, as it looked like we were going to need all that money she managed to save us.
With just a couple of days here on this part of the trip we knew we would have to work fast to cram in the sights and delights of Rio
2 Leblon at about teatime.
. Falling asleep whilst sunbathing by the pool on the first morning, however, put paid to the planned excursion to Corcovado, the big hill with the massive Jesus. Nevermind, there were plenty of nice places to go and explore lunch options near the hotel, and shopping for Havaianas is much less tiring than trekking up mountains. And anyway, I think we've paid our dues in that respect already (see Ecuador section).Similarly, a morning spent determinedly holding-in my belly in on the beach the next day and an afternoon spent traipsing around looking for an Amex office courtesy of some typically inaccurate Footprints misinformation meant that the Sugar Loaf trip was also scrubbed.
Still, we did have a good mooch around the world famous Copacabana beach area, and yes, Manilow did the place proud with his dreadful cabaret standard.
ALI: Since we'd resolved to make another stop in Rio before the end of our trip finally ends, we decided that the 'culture stuff' could wait until our return, and instead elected to spend a couple of days sunbathing, eating nice dinners and drinking lots of wine. Leblon is beautiful, with a quiet beach, trendy bars and boutiques, and our hotel The Marina was lovely with a rooftop bar / pool from which we could enjoy the fabulous views over sophisticated pre-dinner cocktails
3 Leblon. Crikey, the skies gone pink now.
. Oh, alright then - yes, Simon had lagers.Walking down the beach through Ipanema and into Copacabana it did get ever busier and tackier, but hey, its Copacabana - what do you expect? I've never seen so many shapes and sizes! I had to put my sunglasses on so that my eyeballs would stay securely in their sockets!
SIMON: Still, the benefit of all Rio's male beach bum inhabitants insistence on wondering around the streets dressed only in tiny skin tight Speedos means that, contrary to reports, you feel perfectly safe as they are clearly ill-dressed for the concealment of weaponry and other mugging paraphernalia. That being said, the occasional gasp from Alison as some beefcake or other passed by seemed to indicate her suspicion that they might be 'packing', although I put it down to the fact that these chaps would obviously need somewhere to store their lunchtime banana. Or socks, perhaps, for when it got a bit colder later on.
