Part Two: Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.We took a cab to my wife’s aunt’s in Jardins, which took about an hour. My wife’s aunt was happy to babysit for us, so we got settled, put the kids to bed, as it was already 8pm, and went out to have dinner at Cantina de Berro, a pizza place that was having a sushi rodizio that night. A rodizio is an all-you-can-eat buffet. The pizza was good although nothing special. One interesting thing they had that I haven’t seen elsewhere is a wooden case with a cover for the pizza that they bring to your table and leave there with the cover on. It keeps the pizza hot for much longer than it would stay hot otherwise. The sushi was very plain and not very good.
Cantina de Berro 3/5
One point about the weather. Officially, it was winter in Brazil while we were there; although, I did not find the weather to be cold at all. There was a nice chill in the air that kept things crisp, but I didn’t feel like I needed a jacket at any point in time in Brazil. It was definitely a nice respite from the brutal summer heat in Boca Raton.
The T-Mobile roaming service in Sao Paulo was not very good. My phone kept switching between networks and didn’t have service in a lot of places, especially indoors. The service got much better after we left Sao Paulo and worked perfectly for the remainder of the trip.
The next day, Friday, we went out for lunch at Sushi Papaia. I had read in the Brazil master thread that this place was excellent, on par with Yakimono in Montreal, which I consider to be the best kosher place I’ve ever been to-better than Shallot’s in Chicago. I am a big sushi fan, so needless to say, I was excited to check it out.
There are actually 2 Sushi Papaia restaurants on the same block, one kosher and and one non-kosher. Both are owned by the same owner, and he supposedly wishes he opened the kosher one sooner than he did, and the prices certainly reflect that.
They had a menu in English, but it didn’t have any prices on it. I suspect that might be intentional, as the prices are quite high. There was some confusion with our order, as some items on the menu were in portuguese, and no one there spoke any english, and I somehow ended up with a sushi tataki cone with mushrooms as one of my dishes.
The sushi was very good quality sushi with a multitude of flavors and very fresh. I was not a fan of the mushroom cone thing though. My wife ordered a breaded beef dish which was good and some chicken fingers for my daughter, also good. Interestingly enough, this was the only restaurant we were at during our trip that offered fresh tuna, everyone else was serving it from cans. Apparently the demand for fresh tuna there is not like it is stateside.
It was a good meal, but there is no way I would rank this place at anywhere near Yakimono or Shallots. Not even close.
Sushi Papaia 3.75/5
Afterwards we walked around Higienopolis a bit and then took a cab home. I had downloaded the 99Taxis app which allows you to flag down taxis using your phone, similar Uber, except that you are still using official taxis. It is a great app and worked very well, with us getting a taxi at our location usually within 3 minutes.
As it was winter, Shabbos came in around 5pm. Shabbos was very nice and the people in the shuls we davened in were super friendly, and many of them came over to say hi after davening.
On Saturday night, my wife’s aunt babysat for us again and we went to go check out an ice cream place called Baccio de Latte. They have a list of their kosher flavors that you can request, although they are not CY.
We were in for a big treat. The ice cream was the most amazing, delicious ice cream we had ever tasted in our lives. It was soft, creamy, and the flavors tasted so real and exquisite. The espresso was really good as well. After we finished eating, my wife and I both agreed that it was, hands down, the best ice cream we had ever had.
Baccio de Latte 5/5
Baccio de Latte Espresso
Baccio de Latte Ice Cream
The next day, Sunday, we woke up late and I spent the first half of the day booking our internal flights around Brazil, which I had neglected to book earlier. After that we went out to walk around Rue Oscar Freire, which is a high-end shopping avenue that runs through Jardins.
We ended up at the grocery store to pick up some provisions, and then went to have lunch at Via Babush, another pizza/sushi place in Higienopolis. The pizza and sushi were both decent, but again, nothing special.
Via Babush: 3.25/5
After that, we took a cab to Hotel Unique, a boutique hotel in Jardins with incredible rooftop views that a friend had recommended we check out. The hotel is definitely “Unique,” as it is shaped like a boat and has circular windows. From the outside, it didn’t look like it would offer much in terms of views as it is not very tall, but it is situated on top of a hill and really has some impressive, commanding views of Sao Paulo. We spent some time on the rooftop bar and then took a cab back to the house to pack up and get the kids to bed.
View from Hotel Unique.
View from Hotel Unique.
Hotel Unique Rooftop Bar.
We had heard good things about Nur, a nice meat restaurant in Higienopolis, so we decided to go there for dinner. My wife’s aunt agreed to babysit our kids again so my wife and I were able to go out unencumbered. The restaurant was fairly empty when we were there and the service was very attentive, which is more than I can say for most of the other places we were at.
The food was excellent. My wife and I both ordered peppercorn steaks, medium rare for me and medium for her and they were both very tender, flavorful, and juicy. The sides were very good and the peppercorn sauce was spectacular. We had an apple tart for dessert and that was excellent as well.
Nur: 4.25/5
Nur Peppercorn Steak
We awoke early the next morning for our flight to Rio de Janeiro, which I had booked with Gol, a Brazilian low cost carrier. We took a cab to the airport and paid with a CC at the taxi station by the entrance. Check-in at GRU took at least an hour, even waiting at the priority line. Surprisingly, they didn’t give us any issues about our luggage, which was a few kg’s overweight.
After we checked in our bags, we went to the gate printed on our BP’s only to find it completely empty! Apparently, they had suddenly switched gates on us without bothering to inform anyone. We found the correct gate and arrived just as they were starting to board. Brazilians have a reputation for being very friendly people, and we definitely found that to be the case throughout our time in Brazil. The people waiting ushered us to the front of the line and after they scanned our BP’s, they helped us board the waiting bus that would take us to the plane. After we drove through the tarmac and around a BA 747, we pulled up to our plane, a 737-800.
Gol 737
Just a side point. Delta partners with both Gol and Aerolineas Argentinas and offers coach redemptions within Southern South America for 25k RT. Combine that with a stopover and an open-jaw and you can really hop around Brazil and Argentina for cheap.
I had put GRU-GIG, GIG-IGU, IGR-EZE on hold with DL but the hold expired prematurely and the seats for GIG-IGU never went back into inventory so we had to buy some flights and use Avios instead. I found the Gol experience to be very good for a LCC. The seats had decent pitch and they handed out snacks and drinks.
We landed in Rio de Janeiro, and took a cab to our next hotel, Sheraton Rio. I had booked it with the employee rate. It was in the cab that my wife remembered that she had left her phone in the seatback pocket on the plane. Rather than waste my time on the phone in Portuguese, I filed a lost item report with their Twitter team, who spoke English and were very helpful. I also tried calling it and searching for it on Find My iPhone but had no luck finding it. Luckily she was using her old 3GS for the trip and not her new 5S. We figured it was gone for good. More on that later.
For the remainder of the trip, she just used the roaming on her 5S sparingly.
The drive from the airport to the hotel took about an hour, traffic through downtown Rio was quite bad. We did see some cool sand sculptures on Copacabana Beach.
Beach sand sculptures.
We arrived at the hotel and checked into a gorgeous lobby with big glass walls overlooking the blue ocean. Check-in there was another encounter with the Speed of South America as it took at least 20 minutes to check us in.
Check-in lobby at Sheraton Rio.
We went up to our room, a fairly large modern room with a gorgeous view of Rio. I tried to take a shower but soon discovered that the there was no hot water. Maintenance sent up a engineer to check it out and after a few minutes of fiddling, he called the engineering dept and found out that there was a hot water outage that had just been fixed in the hotel. The hot water came back quickly and I took a much needed shower.
View from the balcony at Sheraton Rio
We took a cab to Copacabana and walked around the area and checked out some of the stores in the neighborhood. They had a lot of touristy stores which we avoided but there was still what to see. We found a store selling young coconuts and had some fresh coconut water and papayas.
For dinner, we went to Deleite Pizza, in Copacabana. The pizza there was good with an interesting, cracker-like crust and they had a good selection of beer. I did find it to be extremely overpriced.
Deleite: 3.25/5
Deleite pizza and beer
Rio has a reputation of being a dangerous city but the reality is that as long as you are vigilant and avoid the Favelas, you will be fine. Snatch and grabs are supposedly also common.
BH, we did not encounter any issues at all and felt very safe.
Copacabana at night.
After returning back to the hotel, we went to go hang out in the back of the hotel, where they had the pools, a bar, restaurant and cabanas right in front of the beach. It was there where I discovered the Caipirinha, the native brazilian cocktail.
The Caipirinha is made with muddled limes and sugar, ice, and cachaca, a distilled spirit made of sugar cane, very similar to rum. It is refreshing, delicious, and can really hit you fast. After an unspecified amount of Caipirinhas, we returned to our room to go to sleep.
Cabanas at the Sheraton Rio.
The next day we went over to Sugarloaf Mountain in the Rio harbor. Sugarloaf Mountain is a natural granite mountain rising 1,299 feet above the Rio harbor and offers incredible views of the city. They have 2 separate cable cars that you can take to get to the top of the mountain, and it is fairly stroller friendly.
Now a few words about our stroller setup. A few weeks before the trip, I purchased a Citi Select stroller with a second seat and carseat attachment (with multiple 20% off coupons at BBB;-)). We took it on a mini trip to NYC to test it out and really liked it. While it is heavy and bulky, it is built like a tank and holds a ridiculous amount of bags in the bottom pocket and hook attached to the handlebar. I also got a large bag to put the whole contraption into when we would fold it gate check it. Assembly and disassembly is a pain, but after a few times doing it, I was able to put it together and take it apart in a couple of minutes. It was a far cry from the ease of our previous stroller, a Citi Mini GT, which folds in about 5 seconds, but we needed the double stroller capability. The luggage capacity is also far better than the GT, which has a tiny bottom basket and cannot support anything from the handlebar due to stability issues. In fact, once we checked in our luggages, we were able to traverse the airport with all of our carry ons and hand luggage loaded onto the stroller, while being simultaneously occupied by both kids.
Back to Sugarloaf Mountain. We took the first cable car up the mountain and stopped at the first viewpoint. Again, the Brazilian’s were super friendly and accommodating to us, giving us priority and trying to assist when they saw were with our kids. The views from the mountain are truly astonishing. Rio has a very unique harbor, with the sea entering the harbor similar to a river mouth. There are also a number of granite mountains similar to Sugarloaf overlooking the harbor. One cool sight was seeing the planes come in for landing at Santos Dumont airport, the local Rio airport. The landing strips are surrounded by water and the planes come in really low above the water between Sugarloaf and the city. You are actually looking down on the planes as they come in for landing.
View from Sugarloaf Mountain.
View from Sugarloaf Mountain.
Planes landing at Santos Dumont Airport.
Planes landing at Santos Dumont Airport.
Cable car up the mountain.
We stopped for lunch at the picnic area at the midway point and enjoyed some delicious maracuya (passion fruit) from a fruit stand there. After lunch, we boarded the second cable car for the ride to the top. The mountain is surrounded by lush vegetation and has lots of wildlife living there. Supposedly, you can see monkeys cavorting in the trees although we didn’t see any. There were also lots of birds flying overhead.
View of Copacabana and Leblon.
Sugarloaf Mountain.
After some time at the top of the mountain, we headed back down and took a cab back to Copacabana for dinner. There is a meat restaurant called Shelanu, located inside the Brazilian Israeli Club in Copacabana. The food there was fresh and tasty and really hits the spot after a long day of sightseeing. The owner, Roger, is very friendly and engaging, and speaks fluent english. My wife had a garlic steak and I had a burger.
Garlic Steak.
Roger's Burger.
After dinner, we did some shopping in the area and picked up some souvenirs and trinkets for my mom and sisters, as well as groceries for our time in Igauzu Falls, where kosher food is extremely limited. Then it was back to the hotel for a night swim, the cabanas, and some more caipirinhas. The weather in Rio was fantastic; the days were warm, but not too hot, and the nights were just perfect.
The next morning, we woke up early to a gorgeous sunrise, packed up, and took a cab back to the airport for our flight to Igauzu Falls.
Sunrise over Rio.
To be continued….
