Your First Trip To Rio de Janeiro

0:15Hi, I'm Ryan Davis. And I'm Kiernan Schmidt. And this is Out of Office, a travel podcast. this seat taken hey kiernan hello ryan welcome welcome back welcome back to both of us i feel like we've traversed many miles since last we were on the mics yeah i mean it's good uh as travel show hosts to travel occasionally you know yeah and and we're not even leaving a gap no uh return trips for the labor day week i feel like a lot of podcasts i'm noticing that happening Yeah, no, we honor Labor Day by talking about travel. And you've got a first trip here. These are big episodes. We used to call them 101s, no more.

1:03These are first trips now. Yeah, this is a first trip, a first time for me in a new country, first time in a new city. So super excited to talk about my recent trip to Rio de Janeiro. So are you still in Brazil? This is the Judy Alert, where we update Ryan's mom about where he is, and I don't know either. Are you still in Brazil right now? No, I got back on Sunday night. We flew a red-eye overnight Saturday, and so I'm in Bogota in my apartment in beautiful Nogal. And yeah, it's a sunny morning. No gal, that kind of describes your sexuality as well. Yeah. It's such a layup joke. People are going to hate that.

1:49So you did two full weeks in Brazil. And was this pure vacation? Were you also working? What was the setup here? It was like a 60-40 vacation. So we got like four full days. So pretty much your standard working schedule. Yeah, we got four full travel days in each city, plus dinners and whatever we could pop in after work. Sure. Okay. That sounds pretty good. And were you both working? Yes, we were both. Okay, that helps. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we had nice Airbnbs with fast internet and, you know, had time in the morning because of the time difference to go grab a coffee before the, you know, before the workday started.

2:33I assume, well, we'll probably talk about the coffee in Brazil as we go through the Brazil episodes, I assume. Yeah, I'm a bit of a Colombian coffee snob. But yeah, there's some great coffee in Brazil. We're definitely going to touch on a few places. Do you know the old Rat Pack song, the coffee song? The refrain of it says they've got a lot of coffee in Brazil. It's like the go to line in there. No, but there's a lot of songs about Brazil. You know, people people liked it back in the day to write kind of Brazil travel songs. Oh, that's interesting. Was Brazil like large in the American imagination as like an exotic place?

3:10Yeah. The 70s and 80s, you know, they did a lot of like an am like classic. Yeah, yeah. I do picture like all Pan Am planes going to Brazil. Yeah. So, yeah, so it definitely you became like an international travel destination around around that time and has sort of retained that that sort of a mystical travel kind of vibe. And I had waited, you know, I've been all over South America and I this is my first time getting into Brazil, famously turned away without a visa, got the visa this time. we got to figure out where that where you told that story in the archives i feel like that has to be in the show notes here because uh it's quite the tale yeah it's it's quite the tale but but i got in and um you know yeah we have we have a lot to talk about um i just right what what were i mean given that you're you from our recent travels you've got a few episodes out of this i've got a few episodes for mine so what where did you go how long were you in each and like what's what's got the meat of an episode on it for what's coming up.

4:18So we've got this, this episode on, on Rio and then another, uh, first, first trip to Sao Paulo. Um, and they're both really different cities. You know, Rio is a, a huge beach town, you know, it's a, uh, and, and, uh, Sao Paulo is like a metropolitan, uh, you know, it's like New York to Miami or maybe New York to LA would be a good way to think about it. Okay. All right. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And did you spend about the equal amount of time in both? Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And then I just got back from a trip with the family. We did a few days in Chicago. This is my first trip to Chicago with children.

5:00That will be certainly an episode and explored a lot of new museums and things there. Got to the Obama Presidential Center, which was very interesting. I have a lot to say on that. I was even thinking maybe try to get a guest from the Obama Presidential Center because the design of it is really something to dig into so much symbolism in the buildings, but also in the park all around it. It was very impressive. And it definitely had that new presidential center smell about it, you know, so there's a lot to talk about. And also a strange thing to visit the Obama Center in these times. So a very lot to say on that.

5:39Then we road tripped up to what's called Harbor Country in Michigan, which is this string of shore towns on Lake Michigan, which is still called Lake Michigan as of this recording. And we didn't we didn't make it over to Lake America. But the Google Maps changed while we were out there, which was very exciting to be on a great Lake at that time. And very interesting, especially for kids like you and me who grew up on East Coast beaches to experience lake culture. And it was the perfect time to go because most of the country was already back in school. And even in Michigan, in Illinois, they had gone back to school.

6:20So you really had the beaches to yourself. A lot of great food out there. It was a Bon Appetit article two years ago that had inspired our trip to Michigan Harbor country. And then we had been planning to go back to Chicago for another couple of days. And we thought, you know what, let's go explore, you know, an out of the way city a little bit, just an hour and a half from Chicago. And we went to Milwaukee. So we can do a first trip to Milwaukee, which there's a, you know, there's a good long weekend to be had in Chicago, mostly eating sausages and drinking beer. Yeah, no, I I'll have a few things to contribute to the to the Milwaukee episode as well.

6:57Fan of the of the cheese curds there. But these are so I think what we're what we're planning to do is we're going to be trading off episodes for probably the next six episodes exploring these travels. And I'm excited. I know very little about Rio. The most I know is that there's a line in the producers where Nathan Lane says after they steal all the money, they're going to Rio. Yeah, that's that's sort of the Rio vibe back then. um we also will have a very special uh spooky episode in october this is a big announcement well i don't i don't want to give it away yet but uh oh you're not going to give it away yeah we'll talk about it on the next episode but really excited about that one too so lots of big get not since rick steves have have there has there been this big a get for on the guest category yeah and i'm i'm fan boring about this one too so i'm excited about it so uh that'll be something we will announce and something to look forward to.

7:53But I do think because it's a long flight to Rio, that it's probably time to take off. Tell the cabin crew in Portuguese. Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff, please. All right, Kiernan. So Rio is a huge city, both in population, 7 million people in the city, 12 million in the metropolitan area. It's the second biggest city in Brazil after Sao Paulo. And it spent almost two centuries as the capital of the Brazilian empire. But it's also physically incredibly large. It is 464 square miles. So it is a massive city situated right on the Atlantic. It's got a beautiful bay, mountains, lagoons. and you know one of the things that makes rio interesting is it's an inesco world heritage site not for any specific building but for the way that the city and the geography interact um and how just sort of gorgeous it is to sort of be in rio and we're going to talk about some of the ways that you can sort of see and experience um the geography because that's one of the one of the coolest and most unique things about the city okay all right that's and and uh is that something you notice like while you're landing it is something uh that you can definitely we landed at night but when we flew out we got a good view of that but it's something that you'll see as you go to some of these places we're gonna talk about today um rio has 166 neighborhoods uh so you know a huge city, these neighborhoods are divided into sort of five APs, areas of planning.

9:46Of those five, we really only went to three. So that's what we're going to focus on today. And, you know, Rio is a city with a lot of outdoorsy stuff. You know, you've got the mountains, the hiking, the beaches, the swimming. So, you know, we're going to start with some of that before we go into the more sort of like urban travel that that I usually talk about. And do you get the feel that the people who live in Rio are are they the outdoorsy type? Like I always think of people who live in like Denver as this, right? Like they've got their day jobs and then the weekends it's like emptied out and they're out outdoors the whole time.

10:22A hundred percent. Like the mountains and the beach are public spaces. You know, people are like jogging on the on by the beach. They're hiking on the weekends. It's all very integrated into their life. So that really felt unique to me as somebody who lives in more of an urban city most of my adult life. So the first thing I want to talk about are the two mountains that the tourists go to. The first one is called Sugarloaf, And it's called sugar loaf because it looks like a loaf of sugar. And historically, it's a loaf of sugar. Hold on. Yeah, it's what it's what how they package sugar to send it out of the, you know, out of the out of the, you know, sugar refineries.

11:12And for for hundreds of years, Brazil was really a sugar place. They made a lot of sugar. You know, Brazil's been around about 500 years. They're primary sugar loaf. So it's actually quite tall and thin. It almost looks like a like a like a salt and pepper shaker. It absolutely does. It's it's a very sort of strange looking, you know, mountain and very steep. It's not it's not a mountain that you look like you could climb easily. It's definitely something that you would need a lot of experience and tools to climb up. But, you know, what they have built is this amazing cable car that that takes you up up the mountain.

11:56I was hoping you were going to say funicular. We'll get there. We'll get to it. Oh, is there a funicular in this episode? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. For newer listeners, by the way, I've been promising a funicular episode since the very first episode. We're here on episode 234. We've been collecting them. We've got greatest funiculars around the world, and I had no idea one was going to be here. Yeah, so this, though, is a cable car. One of the first ever cable cars meant primarily for tourism opened in 1912. And it takes you up a smaller mountain. You get off the cable car, and then you get on a second cable car that takes you up to Sugarloaf.

12:39So it's a two-cable car experience. One of the practical things I will recommend that is if you can get the fast track ticket, it'll make your life much better because there are multiple lines to get into these multiple cable cars. And the fast track just makes it much, much easier. And you can get that on the website. This was the first thing that we did. And, you know, you get to the top of Sugarloaf and you get an idea of just how expansive Rio is. You get a view of the bay, of all the different sort of, you know, major neighborhoods, Copacabana, the Atlantic, the downtown. And you can see from across the city, Christ the Redeemer, the famous Art Deco statue.

13:24You can see that, you know, from Sugarloaf. And on top of the mountain, there's plenty of little stores and, you know, there's a couple restaurants and places that you can really spend some time. So you can either kind of go up, get the view, come right back down, or you can go up and make sort of like an afternoon of it where you're, you know, you're kind of doing some shopping and having a bite to eat. We went up at sunset. We timed it so we could see sort of the Brazil, you'll see Rio by day. And then sort of as the sunset, it was really, really, really beautiful. And it was a great introduction to the city.

14:06and you know this is the is this the sort of attraction that like you can kind of uh you know just show up buy a ticket whenever or does this get no no no so this is one of the things that's important is that you should book these tickets you know in advance we went uh in the in the off season the the winter i was 85 degrees um but it was the winter in in brazil um in the summer where it can get much, much hotter. Uh, it's, you know, there are a lot more tourists and it's even busier, but it was, you know, it was full, um, when we went and, you know, that's why I definitely recommend get those tickets in advance, get the fast track if you can do it.

14:44Um, you know, cause it is, it is a crowded city. It's a big city to begin with a lot of people there just kind of, you know, there were a lot of just Brazilians who were just kind of enjoying their, their Sunday afternoon um at sugar loaf um so definitely get those those tickets in advance and the mountain you know has been a historical uh it's been important historically for a really long time um you know pre-brazil it was uh you know part of indigenous culture um when brazil uh you know it's founded as as an empire and uh they name it sugar loaf because sugar is their primary export But Brazil had slavery for a very long time, even longer than the US, didn't end until 1888.

15:33And there was this guy named Pedro II who was the emperor of Brazil. And he was off on a – he loved to go to Europe. He was a big traveler. We could even do an episode on Pedro II's travels. and when he was gone his daughter signed this law abolishing slavery princess isabel and when he returned uh you know via boat to to uh to rio uh these these students from the military school and there's still a military uh installation right below sugarloaf that you can see they actually climbed to the top of the mountain this is before obviously the cable car So this is a heck of an endeavor. They climbed to the top of the mountain and they put a huge sign that said Salve, which means welcome in Portuguese, welcoming the emperor back to Brazil and thanking him basically for passing this pretty popular law that his daughter had actually done.

16:38And he had he had been too kind of like, you know, too cowardly to sort of do it. So so she took she took the initiative and he got the benefit of the big welcome on top of the mountain. But when you go to the mountain, just imagining these milks, these students climbing to the top of it to put up this massive banner in 1888, really wild. How how long would it take to climb it? Do you have any idea? I can only imagine. I mean, it's, it's, what is it? It's a 1300 feet. So, you know, it's, and it's steep. It's crazy steep. And, but it's hikeable. You don't have to like rock climb to get to the top.

17:15No, no, you would, you would have to rock climb. Oh, you would have to rock climb. Okay. So everybody's taking the, the sky bucket. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is, this isn't like in Peru where you can, you can like get up to Machu Picchu. A normal person can do it. No, you'd have to be like a real, a real adventurer to to to do that these days okay got it so the other uh big mountain um that that we went up um is is it probably the the most famous of the two um this is uh corcovado and this is where christ the redeemer the famous statue um is and this is even taller this is 2 ,330 feet. It sits inside of a national park.

18:01And you know how you get up here, is you take a funicular. Oh my God. Is it a long one? It is. It takes about a half hour to get up there. Yeah. It's pretty long. This is a funicular that ends with, with a giant statue of Jesus. Exactly. It's, I mean, this, this is going to be the number one funicular on that episode. I mean, I can already tip the hand. You know, you can't get better than a long funicular that ends with Jesus. Yeah. So this this funicular first started operations in 1884. So people were going up to that's old. How's it looking? Yeah, it's been it's been renovated. It's nice. It takes you up there.

18:42And, you know, this is actually the same train that they use to take the materials up in the 1920s and 30s to actually build the Chrysler Redeemer. statue um so you know this predates um the statue this was a tourist attraction as a mountain before uh the statue was sort of built on there and let me tell you the view is astonishing i'm somebody who doesn't love heights um and i thought sugar uh sugar loaf was a a tall tall mountain yeah i i was not prepared for the you know it took me i was dizzy for a minute or two It was very windy that day, and it was just incredible. You have 360 views of Rio.

19:29You can see Sugarloaf, which looks like a little drawer from Corcovado, but really incredible views of the city. All inspiring to see this beautiful Art Deco statue that's 100 feet tall of Jesus with his arms stretched out. and made of thousands of little soapstone tiles. And definitely get your tickets in advance. This is the number one thing tourists do in Rio. Get those tickets and arrive at the train station 45 minutes before your train because, again, we were there on the off-season and it was chaotic. I can only imagine how chaotic it gets in the peak season where your sunscreen bring bring a bottle of water.

20:22You know, they have a little cafe on the top of the mountain, but you're going to be waiting in line and in the sun to get on that train. So definitely recommend that. But but really awe inspiring, beautiful, you know, views and and Christ the Redeemer is is, you know, it's an iconic one of the wonders of the world. and uh what do you what of the statue tell me you know how's jesus looking up there he's looking great you know he was built in 1931 it was a a huge project uh they had the diocese raised a lot of money um to to build it got a really fancy italian uh architect to come over went through a bunch of different uh options before they settled on one that would work and um You know, there's a little church inside the feet of Christ, like in the in the base.

21:12And there was a mass going on. You know, I love to see a mass. Talk slower. Yeah. So it was it was wild. I mean, it it I it was something I was really looking forward to. And it most definitely didn't disappoint. And, you know, you get these incredible views of the of the city built into the mountains and built around the Atlantic. And you just get an idea of the sheer scale of this place. And it's like, you know, David and I were talking, when you see like the, it's like, what a place to build a city. You know, what a place. It's, you know, it just really one of a kind kind of experience. So if you only have time to do one of these two, you know, do Corcovado.

21:59It's the one you have to do. But if you have time to do both, I would suggest it. And I would do Corcovato second because Sugarloaf would be a little bit disappointing after you've had that majestic experience of being 2 ,500 feet above the city and soaking it all in. Do you have a good view of Sugarloaf? Oh, yeah. You can see Sugarloaf. You can see everything. Yeah. Yeah, it's chaotic. It's chaotic up there. You do have to go up some steps, but not too many. It gets you pretty close to the train, gets you pretty close to Jesus. And you can get off and walk around in the national park. We didn't have time to do that that day, but it is inside of a national park that has monkeys and all sorts of fun things.

22:47So again, if you want to spend more time, you can make a fuller afternoon of it. But the whole experience, you know, takes about two hours. Just just if you're just going up there to hang out with Jesus. You've you've sold me. You've sold me. So the mountains, especially you've sold me. It's like they've made it really easy to go up these mountains. They've provided transportation. Is this one another hikeable one? This one is one that people that people do that people do hike. But it would be a huge undertaking. It would be a serious undertaking. You can get off in the middle, like the funicular stops sort of halfway up.

23:28So if you wanted to get off and kind of like experience some of the wilderness of the National Park, you can do that and then get back on the train and go up to the top. So there are some options to sort of kind of experience multiple parts of the mountain that, you know, they make it easy for you to do that. Okay, I'm sold on the mountain part. Yeah. So one of the things you can see from either of these mountains are the incredible, famous beaches of Rio. Rio has 53 miles of coastline. And, you know, it is it is like I said, it's not just like a beach. It's like it's like a serious public space or parks all around the beaches where people are playing tennis and and soccer, football.

24:13um you know it is it is active and alive um you know we we we stayed in two different um beaches uh uh eponema the famous you know girl from eponema of course i was just about to say right to what you were saying a lot of brazilian pop culture music from the what 50s 60s 70s most definitely um in this other more more contemporary kind of resorty area called called barra which was interesting but not nearly as lively and fun as as sort of the famous copacabana i mean copacabana is like i think i knew what copacabana was before i knew what brazil was you know it's like it's like of course the copa we fell in love yeah and the copacabana was a famous uh uh casino um you know so so that right there on on near the water side but no longer it's still a big hotel i don't know if it's still a casino though we didn't we didn't go there but it's um super famous like disney stayed there when he was down doing his uh south american tour um walt disney i i figured i don't know that not not too many people are talking about roy yeah that's his brother that's his brother everybody so we were there in august which again is is winter so it was just a it was a It was a chilly 85 degrees, but it gets very, very hot in the summer.

25:40So the summer is December through March, and that's when it's incredibly busy. You know, Christmas, New Year's destination. There's Carnival. There's all that kind of great stuff happening. But we went on the off times. It's one of those places where you just bring a towel and you can rent your chair and umbrella pretty much everywhere. There's just people who are, you know, have this stuff available. There's people selling, you know, coconuts and mixed drinks and fried grilled shrimp like right there on the beaches. So it's a fun atmosphere. And, you know, it's certainly something, certainly a way you can spend a good day and enjoy, you know, enjoy the beach.

26:21And you can rent these chairs for something like, you know,$3. One thing I'll say is that the exchange rate right now is insane. It's like five real for a dollar. Um, 10 years ago, it was one real for a dollar. So the, the, the bang for your buck in Rio is unlike anything I've, I've experienced in a really, really long time. Um, so, so, uh, you know, it's, it just, it's makes it really easy just to go to the beach and, and, and have a good time. Um, and are you doing, were you doing like full day beach visits? Were you doing just half day or a walk in the morning? How are you doing your beach?

26:56So actually David did a beach day. I, I did not do a beach day. he had an extra he had an extra day off columbia they have a lot more days off than than we do um so he did a full beach day i we just i just kind of walked along the beach and stuff i didn't i didn't kind of like sit in my my my trunks and do like a mexico beach your trunks you brought your your trunks your beach i did bring my trunks i did and but i did not get a chance to we just owe you in a full suit yeah shoes on it was too hot trust me um but the two beaches are very different uh you know Ipanema is like you know more of a party fun vibe there's a gay beach there it's you know it's famous from all the pop songs and then Bara is a much more kind of relaxed uh you know place where there's just a bunch of resorts where you can stay at and and uh have beach access so you know less less um less exciting but if you're traveling with like a family in Brazil you know Rio is actually a pretty good family destination there's a lot of you know there's a big science museum there's stuff like that that you can you can take with kids um so and certainly there were a million kids going up those mountains and they all they all had a great time um but let's jump into some of the city parts um let's do it i've done enough of this nature and beauty so one of the things that's interesting about brazil is in the way that sort of you know Mexico's culture is so deeply blended, you know, Spanish and indigenous, you know, cultures.

28:26Brazil is sort of blended Portuguese and African, black African culture, because at one point, Rio had more enslaved people than any city in the world. There was a point where more than half the population was enslaved. And those folks stayed and they built these vibrant communities and really influenced the culture. So it makes it really unique from a lot of other Latin American places because of that really heavy influence of the sort of the African folks who came over. you know they were forced over um but then sort of built a uh built you know built a real culture and and um a lot of that is really evident in rio um and uh so we we we took a we spent a whole day doing a historic walk or we started um in in black rio and we started in the historic uh Ionesco recognized a spot called the Casas do Malongo.

29:42And this was the slave port from the 1800s where, you know, basically anybody who came through, through, through the slave trade in Brazil was brought to this place. And it was about 900 ,000 people that were brought through this single um wharf they built the city out now where it's not actually like a wharf anymore it's like in interior but they've they've they've done a lot of work in the last 10-15 years to you know bring more historic context and uh sculptures that speak to sort of the experience that that people had there um so we started uh we started there you know it's it's it's not like a uh incredible uh you know preserved tourist destination but it's a place to go i think they're really important if you want to understand um you know sort of what you know how brazil was uh how rio was was built and it's part of a community that's called little africa um that has uh some really famous uh spots in it so we sort of walked around uh here and you can see a lot of historic buildings from that that colonial era and there's a really famous uh place called pedro do sal which literally means salt rock and this was where a lot of the the the slaves and later the you know minimally paid black laborers did a lot of unloading of things that came in uh into the port so this used to be a port Again, they built the city out more now, so it's no longer like right on the water.

31:29But this is now famous for where samba was basically invented. And, you know, throughout the days, people will come and do sort of like samba performances. But there's a big one on Monday night. So if you're into live music, you know, we didn't get a chance to see this. we were there during the daytime, but they actually on Monday nights have these massive three Samba circles, um, uh, here, uh, where, you know, in this famous sort of salt rock where, uh, you know, people used to labor. Now they, now it's become much more of a cultural destination and, you know, where you can hear this very unique, uh, uh, music, music that originated in, in Brazil from a blending of all these different, you know, African cultures.

32:17Right. I'm just curious, because slavery is such a core part of this history that you're exploring in these neighborhoods and so much was built and the culture was created by freed slaves. How would you compare it to how America talks about slavery in our historic sites that dig into that history? I don't, you know, they are still grappling with the history. And I don't, it doesn't feel as, it doesn't feel like, you know, when you're in, I was talking to David about this, when you go to like Tennessee and you visit an old plantation and they've really done a good job at like putting all this stuff in historical context.

33:02But there is a new generation of historians and academics who are really pushing to get this history more visible. There are several small museums in Little Africa you can go to to learn more about the history. And in the museums, they've done a really good job at putting it into context. But they haven't figured out, I don't think quite yet, how to make the tourist areas explain it in a way that is really compelling. And I read this excellent book, Brazil, a biography that I'll link to in the show notes that spent a lot of time talking about how Rio was built. And so I had come with a lot of that context.

33:46And I think that would be useful for folks who really are interested in that. There are also a lot of tours available. If you want to, you know, explore more Little Africa, there are tour guides who will take you and show you more places so you can really get an understanding of this. There's a ton of incredible murals. There's a town square, a little square in Black Africa called Largo de San Francisco. and um you know this is right now it's really full of like little restaurants and bars but it's really in the middle of of black rio and and you know you're surrounded by incredible murals of you know historic figures um uh from that that community both the samba folks but also you know people who fought for for um uh you know basically the freedom of the slaves which again didn't happen until 1888, which was really late, even by America being the continent's standards.