Rio de Janeiro is an incredibly beautiful city. It’s a city so full of life and culture that it’s easy to get lost amongst it’s winding roads, colorful alleys, and great beaches. There are little hills just rising out of the ocean and small patches of land connecting different areas of the peninsula. There’s a network of bridges that connects different parts of the city to ease traffic congestion. There are the world famous favelas (a Brazilian word for slum) that snake up the mountain sides from where you can sometimes hear gunshots at night.
It’s an incongruous but somewhat romantic mixture of high and low, good and bad, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly.
We took a trip to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) that’s about 400m high and lets you get sweeping views around the beautiful city. Definitely worth the cable car ride up!