5 day itinerary for Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Wow - what a city. I have summarised this as a 5 day itinerary as a minimum but we stayed 7, and could EASILY have stayed even longer. After all, you can spend all day on one of the worlds most iconic beaches - Copacabana! Or if you're after an even nicer beach... Ipanema.

Summarised table below of our itinerary, but detail below:

Day 1 - Sugarloaf Mountain

Day 2 - Christ the Redeemer

Day 3 - Copacabana Beach

Day 4 - Ipanema Beach, sunset from Arpoador stones

Day 5 - Botanical Gardens, PM: Flamengo game

Where to stay:

We did 5 nights in Copacabana and 2 nights in Ipanema. We happened to be there over the G20 summit, so the weekend hotel prices were very expensive and extremely booked up, which led to us grabbing what we could in Ipanema over the weekend! We did find these areas to be very safe, and could walk around in the evening after it had gone dark without any issues.

Even though Copacabana is obviously the more famous place of the two, in our opinion, Ipanema was nicer. The cafes, restaurants, bars and shops are a bit more upmarket (although still very budget friendly). Although Copacabana had some homelessness, but it was still super cool.

Airbnb is an excellent option in Rio, and we would highly recommend this Airbnb in Copacabana. It was extremely modern, had a lovely kitchen and bathroom, super easy check in and was spotless.

If you are OK with walking, you can easily walk between the two areas in c. 40mins. If not, Uber is super cheap (circa £2/$3 to get between the two).

Food recommendations:

You didn't hear this from us.... but honestly we think we preferred the Brazilian steak to the Argentinian steak. This is an absolute must if you are a meat eater!

Brunch

We had brunch in some really nice cafes:

• Pepo Cafe - I recommend the big breakfast, but swapping the sausage for avocado!

• Bendito - Barao de Ipanema - this cafe did an excellent local speciality called tapioca! Tapioca is essentially a pancake made from a starchy flour. It's delicious, and this is a great place to give this infamous dish a try. If you are not feeling adventurous, you cannot go wrong with their scrambled eggs!

• ZonaSul - this is the local supermarket. We had a couple of meals in the Airbnb - ZonaSul has an AMAZING hot chicken counter, local bread and sushi. All SO tasty and under $5 each. It's a great option if you're travelling on a budget or want to grab something very quick during a busy day.

• Tapi - a quick grab and go specialising in only tapioca - so good.

Steak

SO the big question - where is the best place to get Brazilian steak in Rio?

• Braseiro - as pictured below - this was full of locals and felt very authentic! The flavour from the steak was delicious being cooked on a traditional Brazilian stove, and all of the below came to about $20 for 2 people.

• Mad Brew. Truly one of the nicest platters we had in all of Latin America. We paid $15 each for the below sharing platter - the picture says it all!

• Restaurante e Bar Garota de Ipanema. We got a delicious Picanha steak with sides, served on a skillet.

Itinerary: Feel free to mix/match, spread over extra days or do in any order

Day 1: Sugarloaf Mountain

You have several options in terms of how you can do Sugarloaf:

1) Take the cable car all the way up to the top (no hiking involved)

2) Walk up a neighbouring hill (Morro da Urca) and then cable car to sugarloaf

3) Hike up sugarloaf itself (must do on a tour as this involves some climbing with ropes)

We picked option 2, and would highly recommend this.

Grab an uber across to Morro da Urca, the hike starts to the left hand side (if you are facing the sea) of Praia Vermelha beach. If you look on google maps, you can see "Pista Claudio Coutinho" which is where it starts. Make sure you head up the steps! The hike takes about 30 mins and is pretty steep, so make sure you are wearing trainers and not flipflops, and bring water! There are a couple of amazing viewpoints on the way. When you get to the top, there are plenty of stalls to buy drinks/snacks, a few restaurants, toilets, a helipad where you can grab a helicopter tour (!!), a Flamengo FC shop, havianas shop, and a cheeky view of Christ The Redeemer! We spent a couple of hours here admiring the views in total. There were also little marmosets which were so cute!

From here, you can buy the cable car ticket up to sugarloaf. Annoyingly you have to buy a return ticket all the way back down, and it is a little bit expensive for the budget traveller (cost us £35/$45 each) but so worth it. There are less amenities on sugarloaf itself!

Option 3 looks great too, as we were on a budget we did not want to fork out for this, but if we weren't, this trip looks like a great option. [affiliate]

Day 2: Christ the Redeemer

As a modern world wonder, this is a must do! However, make sure you don't underestimate how much of the day it actually takes up, due to transportation to and from!

We bought our tickets online the day before here.

This includes a van ticket, with 3 pick up points as an option. We, obviously staying in Copacabana, picked this one, where the pick up was in "Praça do Lido" square. It was a nice (and safe) walk from our Airbnb to the pick up point. The van drive is about an hour up to the base of Christ the Redeemer, where you then need to change into a different minibus to go to the top, another c5 mins. Don't worry, there are plenty of staff members on hand. Thankfully there were no queues here!

The views from Christ the Redeemer are amazing but it is obviously really busy, so the earlier you go, the better! They have a company there that can take pictures for you with a professional camera and a "photo bomb free" angle (otherwise good luck getting pics with no one in the background!), and we paid £10 / $13 USD for 4. There is also a cafe up here where you can get food which is reasonably priced. We got the minibus back down where we had to wait over an hour for a transfer back to Copacabana. Unfortunately uber does not work here, and it isn't the safest area to walk around, so I would suggest grabbing a burger (honestly unbelievably tasty!) and admiring the views whilst you wait!

Day 3 & 4: Copacabana and Ipanema beach

These beaches are right next to each other and it is a lovely stroll along the beach front if the weather is not quite nice enough to be sunbathing! You will see people running, on bikes, and scooters. Although Ipanema beach is nicer to sunbathe on, the vibe on Copacabana is honestly awesome; there are lots of local singers and people dancing in the bars/restaurants lining the beach, and tonnes of people playing football on the beach - we got lost watching a game of beach football for the full 90 mins! Arpoador stones, which effectively sits between the two beaches, is a great spot to watch the sunset. We also really enjoyed having a caipirinha along a couple of the bars along Ipanema beach, watching the sunset.

Day 5: Botanical Gardens and Flamengo game

Grab an uber over to the botanical gardens. This is a lovely walk around with lots of lovely nature, a cool view of Cristo, and lots and lots of monkeys! It was about £10/$13 to get in and we spent about 3 hours here.

Afterwards we grabbed lunch in a restaurant there called Green Garden. We tried the local dish of Feijoada to share which was absolutely delicious and would highly recommend!

PM - Flamengo game

Honestly this is a must. As football fans (EPL and SPL), we found the atmosphere at this game better than anything we have ever experienced.. even the Scottish "old firm" game!

We recommend using this trip [affiliate link], our guide was awesome.

These trips sell out fast, so if you're struggling head over to homefans.net as they sell out a little slower. Honestly though, we paid close to $100 USD each; you can do it for MUCH cheaper yourself. If you are particularly nervous about safety, or finding it particularly confusing to get hold of a ticket, we of course would recommend this, but ubering from and to the stadium, we felt we could have probably done it ourselves without a pre-organised trip. It looks like you can buy directly on the website although a little confusing, many sports shops in Copacabana also sell tickets, as well as most hostels. It was totally fine getting an uber after the game as there was plenty available. This bar was a safe spot to get dropped off and picked up from (and where our tour went from/to!) - "Paradela" - you can find it on maps here.

Other:

If you have more time, I would also recommend the below activities:

• Ipanema shopping centre - I personally love looking around at the different brands on offer in different countries! If you like Havianas, c£7/$9 in Brazil vs £30/$40 in the UK...

• Forte Deque de Caxias - a nice hike up and lovely views!

• Lapa and Santa Teresa, Selaron Steps - We caught an uber straight to Lapa and walked to the Selaron steps. The steps are pretty cool, really arty and there is a nice vibe there with live music, but outside of the steps it didn't feel like the safest area, so I wouldn't say this is a must do. We also walked over to the cathedral. This was possibly one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen from the outside, but very very unique in the inside! See below.