How to Be a Carioca recently debuted as a series on Star Plus at the 25th Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival. I am gobsmacked! To be at the premiere, seated in the majestic Odeon Theater in downtown Rio de Janeiro with a standing-room-only crowd, watching the whimsical little book I created decades ago come […]
If you think Rio de Janeiro is only beaches, think again! Museums, parks, bars, waterfalls, hikes, music… the list of what to do while in Rio is infinite. It’s not by chance that Rio’s nickname is Cidade Maravilhosa. It’s a city that embraces diversity and offers activities for all tastes and styles. Being a pseudo […]
How To Survive Your First Churrascaria Rodízio Experience A favorite among the meat-loving Cariocas, these round robin steak houses offer you the unique opportunity of eating all the meat you can stuff inside yourself for one set price. It’s traditional not to eat for the entire day, and then go to a rodízio and gorge. […]
Sparkling sand, translucent water, stunning natural beauty, coupled with year round sunshine and a unique atmosphere that is pure magic. Brazil and beaches go hand in hand like Havaianas, caipirinhas and beautifully golden-tanned bodies. With thousands of pristine, unspoiled beaches nestled within nearly 8 thousand km of breathtaking tropical coastline, Brazil is the sun worshiper’s […]
If you think that Brazil consists only of sultry white sand beaches and palm trees, think again! Home to some of the world’s most spectacular landscapes, come to Brazil and you’ll also discover majestic mountains, dense Amazonian jungles, rain forests, rivers, waterfalls, sand dunes, swamp lands and more. After all, it’s a country so large […]
The Olympics have drawn to a close, and the cariocas are already filled with saudades. You know that feeling, the one of indescribable longing when the circus is leaving town and you want to scurry after it crying: “Please come back. We love you!” I wish Rio were a person so I could give it […]
While the foreign press has been diligently trying to hunt down mosquitoes and murky water to report on, something much fishier has been going down at Rio 2016, and it isn’t floating belly up in Guanabara Bay. The fish, in this case, is a story with enough holes in it to make a slab of […]
(Biscoito Globo became the center of attention during the 2016 Rio Olympics when the New York Times published a critique of this carioca all-time favorite snack. Reporter David Segal described biting into a Biscoito Globo “as if your teeth are at a party to which your tongue was not invited.” The following response was published […]
Today, with Rio at center stage, I can say that in all the years I have lived here, I’ve never seen the cariocas prouder. It seems like only yesterday that the locals — although happy to welcome the athletes and visitors with open arms — weren’t really all that interested in the Olympics. They were […]
Although the carioca would rather not admit it, the sun doesn’t always shine in the Cidade Maravilhosa. To the locals, this climatic phenomenon is referred to as a cold front, no matter if the street thermometers are registering a steamy 35 degrees Celsius (95F) or a teeth-chattering frosty 20 degrees Celsius (69F). Regardless of the […]