Honeymoon in Rio de Janeiro: Botanical Garden

Moving on with the Rio de Janeiro posts (it’s been awhile)…

On the third morning of our trip, Jorge and I spent about an hour trying to figure out which was the correct bus to get to the Botanical Garden. After getting several different answers from several different people while trying to find out which one-way street was correct, we were finally on our way!

We passed through Ipanema and the uber-fabulous neighborhood of Leblon. I knew we’d arrived at the Botanical Garden when I saw several lines of the tallest palm trees I’ve ever seen just off to my left. (Palm trees don’t get that tall here in Cancun, aka Hurrican Territory!)

Here are the pictures! It only cost a few dollars per person, and it was a great way to spend a few hours:

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Honeymoon in Rio de Janeiro: Ipanema Beach

Moving along with the honeymoon posts, today I’ll write about my favorite part of Rio de Janeiro: Ipanema.

You may remember we stayed in the Copacabana district, which was lovely, but on the 3rd day of our trip we finally made it to the neighboring beach neighborhood of Ipanema. Once we discovered it, we’d spent hours on the remaining days of our trip just wandering around the streets and beach of Ipanema, just a 20 minute walk from our Copacabana apartment. It has a very cool vibe, with lots of surfers, beautiful views and endless restaurants to choose from. Ipanema is the perfect place to just… be.

If we ever make it back to Rio, we’re definitely staying in Ipanema!

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Note: I know I’ve been using the slideshow feature a lot lately. Personally I like it better for posts with lots of photos, but if you have a hard time seeing it please let me know and I’ll be sure to use regular format in the future.

Rio de Janeiro Honeymoon: Copacabana

We’ve been back from Rio de Janeiro since Wednesday, after a fun night sleeping in a dirty restaurant booth at the airport, followed by a 9 1/2 hour flight. Good times. (This bad attitude is exactly why I could never be a backpacker… or go camping.) Can’t complain too much, though, because our airfare from Mexico to Brazil was free! (Best. Deal. Ever.)

Now that we’re settled back into Cancun, I can go ahead and start showing photos of our belated honeymoon!

In Rio de Janeiro, we stayed in the Copacabana neighborhood right on the beach. Most hotels were fairly expensive despite not being very exciting-looking, and even a private room at a hostel would have run us upward of $80 US a night several blocks from the beach, and most were booked up. We were very lucky to find out about Gringo Management, who has many apartments for rent in the Copacabana and Ipanema areas for very cheap. Our apartment was on the 12th floor of an apartment building just half a block from the beach, for only $75 US a night! It looked recently redone, plus it had ocean views, Wi-Fi, cable TV, a kitchenette and a small but nice bathroom. We were pretty impressed with it. (Didn’t take any pictures of it, though… oops!)

The view from our window

Our first day in Rio, we spent the whole afternoon walking up and down the boardwalk. It’s a very long boardwalk and it took quite a few hours! The beach and boardwalk were packed that day because apparently it’s a holiday in Brazil. The main road (Avenida Atlantica) had been closed to traffic to allow for more pedestrians. It was a pretty awesome way to start our vacation! After a long walk, we fell asleep on the beach. (Hey, we were tired!)

We didn’t take any photos our first day because we wanted to just take it all in, but here are some photos of the Copacabana neighborhood from other days:

Overall we really enjoyed staying in Copacabana, especially on the busier holidays and weekend. The mountain views from the beach were amazing, especially after years in the flat, flat terrain of the Yucatan Peninsula. (**This was the first time Jorge had ever seen mountains.**) There were also tons of cool little bars along the boardwalk, where I ordered mostly caipirinhas and pizza!

In a few days I’ll blog about our morning at Christ the Redeemer! Stay tuned…

Still Stuck in Rio!

First of all, Id like to apologize for lack of apostrophes in this post (and the last one). I havent quite figured out how to get a good apostrophe on a Brazilian keyboard.

So yesterday I told you guys that we were stuck in Rio de Janeiro after missing our flight. Well, we are still here!

Our airline, TAM, just opened up their flights with Mexico last week, so right now they only have 1 flight going back to Mexico per day. We went to the airport at 4 am today to put ourselves on the waiting list for the flight. They were actually overbooked by 15 people (!!), so we werent able to get on. The girl at the TAM counter told us they were overbooked for Tuesday as well so it wouldnt be worth it for us to try it… but she did manage to get us on Wednesdays flight!!

I know 3 extra days in Rio sounds like an amazing deal, but its not ideal because Im missing 3 days of work and Jorge has a lot of work to do on his final project for school. We really, really just want to be home. Plus we have spent the past 36 hours either at the airport or stressed about what to do… it has NOT been fun and we have gotten very, very little sleep. Were absolutely exhausted. Were also overbudget thanks to the extra days, so we have been living off of Subway, McDonalds and Choco Krispies. Still, were mostly relieved that we wont have to fork over a few thousand bucks for a ticket back… yay!

Now that we have tickets back home and a nice, cheap place to stay today and tomorrow, we can finally kick back and relax a little bit. (We just woke up from a 5 hour nap, our first time sleeping more than 3 hours straight since Friday night).

Anyway, Im off to the beach since I have nothing better to do today 🙂 Gotta take advantage of our time here to make it worth all the frustration!

Our Honeymoon is Booked! Guess Where We’re Going?

**I’d like to apologize to my readers in advance for any excessive use of exclamation points.**

I’d been waiting until it was official to bring this up.

Jorge and I have booked our honeymoon! (over a year late, but ya know… whatever.)

In just a few weeks, we’ll be strolling along the streets and beaches of RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL!!!!

We’ll also be spending some of our time in nearby BUZIOS!!! So gorgeous.

This is really exciting for both of us. For me, I work in the travel industry and I’m surrounded by vacationers all the time, but I rarely get to travel myself! This will be my first time outside of North America.

For Jorge, not only is it his first time outside of Mexico… it’s his first time flying!

We need to save up some vacation spending money this month, and I need to pick up the pace at the gym. (My goal is to be rich and skinny in Rio.)

What’s your dream honeymoon destination?