Hello! Just two days ago, I began the series of blog posts about our travels to Rio de Janeiro with a small post about the beaches within the city that we visited. This one will still be about the city, but this time I will show you some of the known or less known, but still beautiful places. This will likely be divided in two parts, with this one focusing on our hikes, as well as some of the walks in the neighborhoods of Rio, while the next part will focus on bigger landmarks such as Cristo Redentor or Escadaria Selaron!

I am more than certain we did miss some great spots - even though we had a month, for around half of it we had to divide pleasure with work, while we also wanted to see places outside of the city (which I will of course describe in blog posts as well). We did try to visit as many spots as we could that we both researched on the internet as well as asked our new Brazilian friends about.

Sugarloaf

As one of the bigger attractions in Rio de Janeiro, we could not miss Sugarloaf, or as it is called in Brazil - Pão de Açúcar. It is a tall mountain that looks extremely steep, and well.. it is. We were with our university group when we went there, so we all had to take the lift to get all the way up, but there is also a road for hiking - I suggest doing that to the halfway point, after which it is best to use the lift, unless you are a professional climber. While we don't look like it, we certainly love hiking and were quite sad we had to take the lift up.

That said, we made up for it at least a bit by walking down the hill, which proved almost as exhausting as hiking up, as you need to descend via quite uncomfortable stairs. The real charm of the place, however, does not lay in the ability to get all sporty and hike - instead, you should rejoice in the views. As you can see in the picture above, and will see in the one below, it is absolutely stunning to just get an overview of the city - after all, Rio is one of the most beautiful.

View from the top - you can see the halfway point you can hike to.

View of the domestic airport.

Beautiful Library

The Royal Portuguese Reading Room as this place is apparently called in English (I googled it and learnt that fact as I was writing this post) is a beautiful library that contains within itself some of the oldest books written in the Portuguese language. We made it there very much by accident, after walking around some of Rio's markets and less touristy districts.

In general, in our last week, we have grown accustomed enough to this city that we began getting the feel or when and how we can explore a lot of the place while still staying safe. We also started to understand more Portuguese (well, I did, my girlfriend speaks Spanish so she did to begin with), so we just felt much more at home. Finding this library was quite a surprise in the area we did, and it was actually just a very pretty place we were happy to visit.

Rio Catete

Towards our very last days in Rio de Janeiro, we made our way to some of the districts that we got suggested by our newly-met Brazilian friends. In the Catete disctrict, we supported this knowledge with some internet research to try and learn as much as we can before we went. This was a very friendly district with pleasant architecture, a great market with all sorts of things and many little secret paths between buildings.

One such secret was the Cafe Secreto (which is now apparently permanently closed :( ) - a great cafe for a little snack on your way to wherever you're going. We could not resist taking some pictures, so here they are! I definitely recommend checking out some of the Rio districts if you do make it there.

Babilonia

As for Babilonia, it is a favela located on the slope of Morro da Babilonia, which is a hill/mountain with a beautiful view. We were invited there by the community through some of our contacts in Rio (as a university, of course!) to hear about their life, their efforts and so on. It was quite a moving story to me, but I've already described a similar feeling with the Tubiacanga community in one of my posts, so I won't repeat myself.

Part of Babilonia from above.

As a part of our visit, they invited whoever wanted to join them to climb atop the hill. Obviously, we instantly agree as we love a good hike and a pretty view. We got exactly what we were promised - they hiked pretty quick so we had to be fast on our feet to keep up, but it was definitely worth the effort! Just look at this:

That's it for the first part of goodies from Rio de Janeiro! I'd like to repeat once again that we absolutely loved being in the city and find it to be one of the best experiences of our lives. It is a beautiful experience in pretty much every way and I can't believe it is actually so low on the list of many tourists and travelers! Stay tuned for a lot more coming in the next few weeks!