Rio

Maya Café: Back to Basics

If there is a word to describe the Laranjeiras (“Orange Trees”) neighborhood, it is “pleasant.” Agradável. Agreeable. As you walk up its main drag, Laranjeiras Street, you pass by the creamy yellow and white façade of the elegant 19th-century National Institute for the Education of the Deaf on your right. Soon, on your left, you could come across the youth orchestra Camerata Laranjeiras playing free concerts at the General Glicério fair. It’s measurably Rio’s most progressive neighborhood – in the 2012 mayoral election, it was the neighborhood that most favored human rights activists and opposition candidate Marcelo Freixo (48 percent of the neighborhood voted for him in the election against Mayor Eduardo Paes, whereas the city as a whole voted only 28 percent for Freixo). Follow the rising street to its top and you’ll find yourself at the tourist train, ready to go visit the Christ statue.

Rio

CB on the Road: Sun, Sand and Seafood in Barra de Guaratiba

Cariocas are doubly lucky. They live in a city bursting with natural beauty even in its concrete corners, where wide red and waxy abricó-de-macaco flowers grow in crowded plazas and you’re liable to have an overly ripe and spikey jacá fruit fall on your head as you rush to an appointment. For many, Rio is vacation, beaches, forests and samba clubs – enough to satisfy the craving for a life more exotic.

Rio

CADEG: 24-Hour Market People

Foreigners tend to see Rio as stretching from the Christ statue to the beachside neighborhoods, from Copacabana to São Conrado; the rest of the city just provides passage to the Atlantic. That’s a shame. Neighborhoods like Jacarepaguá, Madureira and Bangu have vibrant lives moving at a breathless pace and more intriguing locales than the typical postcard views of the city. Even those of us who have made our homes here can miss these charms. For example, it was only after three and a half years living in Rio that we saw for the first time Madureira’s Baile Charme, a hip hop/electronic music dance party where extraordinarily fashionable attendees do choreographed line dances, and which takes place under a highway overpass about an hour away from the beaches.

Rio

Primeira Pá: Chinese, Made in Brazil

For a country of Brazil’s size (pop. 190 million), the number of foreigners in the country is pretty miniscule. Less than 1 percent of the country’s residents are foreign-born; the top countries of origin for those foreigners are the U.S., Japan and Paraguay. (By comparison, about 13 percent of the U.S. population of 319 million is foreign-born.)

Rio

Aconchego Carioca: Pretension-Free Zone

The Praça da Bandeira, an area of Rio that until recent years was mostly known for prostitution and cheap inner-city housing, is rapidly changing. Lying in the shadow of the massive Maracanã Stadium – built for the 1950 World Cup and the planned location of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics – it is alive with new construction and pedestrian traffic, which are changing the tired face of this historical but underappreciated neighborhood. And sitting snugly in the midst of this new buzz is Aconchego Carioca, a restaurant and bar with one of the best beer menus in Rio.

Rio

CB on the Road: Northeastern Exposure in João Pessoa

Chat up the older residents of a Rio favela and you’re likely to start hearing romantic stories about Brazil’s northeast: those colorful cajú and mangaba fruit trees, the clear turquoise ocean, the folksy and upbeat forró music, chewy tapioca sandwiches and cakes. Brazilians call that saudades – a longing for something lost, which may or may not exist in the form one dreamily remembers it. These are the pleasant memories many northeastern immigrants hold amidst the urban hustle of crowded Rio de Janeiro, where a working-class Brazilian knows the beach exists but easily lives a hot two-hour bus ride away from it.

Rio

Back to the Source: Rio's Top 5 Coffee Spots

Perhaps coffee is underappreciated in Rio because it’s so plentiful. Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee, but both the selection and the presentation of the stuff you’ll find in Rio is hardly what a gringo dreams of in the capital country of café. Coffees here are cafezinhos, small, potent, highly sugary and with no milk. A cafezinho is taken standing up at a lanchonete (snack bar) or on a work break in the office in tiny medicine cups filled from an unseemly plastic cylinder. When Brazilians have seen the size of our morning coffee, many have expressed a concern that we could hurt ourselves with such a large quantity. (It’s just a coffee cup.)