We really weren’t reaching for an alliterative title here – Rio was fun. The city was fun and happening, the people were always having fun and we all had fun too. More on the fun later, however, first we had work to do! We had to bag our fifth modern World Wonder.
In truth, we’re not into ‘bagging’ wonders (especially when you learn about the incredibly flawed process of selecting them), or countries (South America is not the place to ‘bag’ countries – they’re all too big!), or continents (‘bagging’ Antarctica would give some of us all seven, but it’s too expensive and not that appealing), but we were in Rio, and Cristo Redentor (or Christ the Redeemer) is a must.
This time we chose not to use the hotel-offered tour and saved a bunch of money by instead just getting an Uber to the train and buying our own train tickets to the summit. We were warned in several places of “no visibility” on the day we went, but the Gods (or God? Or son of God?) must have been smiling upon us that day as we had great visibility once we got to the top.
We stayed at the top for about half an hour, enjoying the views of Rio and all 38 meters of the statue itself. Cristo Redentor is impressive and we’re glad we made the effort to see it, but does it warrant ‘wonder’ status more than the Eiffel Tower, or the Statue of Liberty to name just two? A global, democratic voting process would be perfect to answer that debate…shame there wasn’t one! So with our work out of the way we headed back to the beach for some more fun.
We’re lucky enough to have been traveling for two and a half years now and a question we often get asked is, “what’s your favorite place you’ve been to?” It’s a tough question to answer because it’s too broad. We’d prefer to sit you down and run through our favorite places by category, rather like the Oscars, but without celebrities…or entertainment (so still like the Oscars really). Side note: remember to never ask us what our favorite place we’ve been to is!
Rio would definitely be nominated in a few categories – biggest upside surprise (we don’t like big cities and aren’t really beach people, but we all agreed that Rio, a big city with a beach, was awesome) , most fun place to visit (of course!) and even the big prize of overall favorite big city (London and Paris also nominated).
Rio is touristy, without going overboard with it. The beach was packed day and night with locals doing their exercise boot camps, football, volleyball, foot volleyball, yoga, running, swimming, commuting, whatever. We even saw a dog walking club. Rio was a happening place for tourists and residents alike. English was spoken, but not widely spoken. We almost enjoyed struggling by in another language for once.
Also, unlike some big European cities, the locals were very welcoming of tourists. Taxi drivers rounded their fares down for us. The hotel staff were very friendly in a genuine way that gave the impression they really wanted us to enjoy Rio. At the football game, the family next to us were very interested in where we were from and seemed invested in making sure we had fun at the game. Also, at the game and on the beach people were drinking, but not to excess – probably because that’s not fun. There was never even a hint of trouble – the locals just seemed far too occupied in having fun! Phew, I’m exhausted! Are you finally satisfied that it wasn’t just a reach for an alliterative title!?
The only thing we didn’t do in Rio that was on our list was Sugarloaf mountain at the top of which you can see those iconic sweeping vistas of Copacabana beach. We decided that we’d rather have fun ON the beach than look AT the beach. So we did. Also, the views from the rooftop pool at our hotel must have been similar, just in reverse.
Perhaps more than anywhere else in South America, we were sorry to have to leave Rio behind. But move on we must. Farewell Rio, we might actually be back one day – not often we say that.
