There was only one destination to visit in Rio de Janeiro the second the sun came out - one of the most famous beaches in the world, of course. So like excited children we woke up to a sunny morning and headed straight for Copacabana Beach....

It was a grey and drizzly day and the whole of downtown Rio seemed to be asleep after the first official night of Carnaval. So we took a tram from 'Centro'  to Santa Teresa, a bohemian district, high on a hill, which is apparently...

Nothing is quite as iconically Brazilian to me as the amazing Cristo Redentor statue which stands like a concrete scarecrow hovering above Rio de Janeiro. I had to see it and the bus trip to Cosme Velho where Cristo lives also provided a...

On our first morning in Rio de Janeiro we took a walk and got lost, only to end up in a sort of Saturday market of filth and junk. There were piles of every sort of rubbish imaginable, squished along a highway underbridge. The smells were...

For the first two days in Rio de Janeiro , the same phrase kept popping into my head: Rio is the pits. The more I saw of this crazy city, the more my phrase rang true. Every time I felt totally unsafe on the dirty streets, every time I...