FEIRA DE SÃO CRISTÓVÃO

THE PLACE IN RIO FOR FOOD, MUSIC AND GOODS FROM THE NORTH

From Lonely Planet:

This enormous fair (32,000 sq meters with over 600 stalls) is not to be missed.

It showcases the culture from the northeast, with barracas (food stalls) selling Bahian dishes as well as beer and cachaça (cane liquor), which flows in great abundance here.

The best time to go is on the weekend, when you can catch live bands playing forró, plus samba groups and comedy troupes, MPB (Música Popular Brasileria) and rodas de capoeira (capoeira circles).

The vibrant scene runs nonstop from Friday morning through to Sunday evening.

In addition to food and drink, you can browse music CDs (forró , of course), hammocks and a wide assortment of handicrafts

GUANABARA BAY

 
BEAUTIFUL, PICTURESQUE AND POLLUTED

Ilha da Boa Viagem -- Island of Good Travel/Safe Voyage -- is much smaller than, but pound-for-pound almost as beautiful as the famed Sugar Loaf.

Home of both a battery that used to protect Guanabara Bay and the Capela de Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, it is the stuff of dreams perched atop the blue waters.

A bridge links it to Niteroi on the mainland.

Though our Portuguese is pretty lousy, we understood a sign we saw in late January to say the buildings are being restored for visitors.

It is about a five minute walk downhill from the Museum of Contemporary Art -- the space ship designed by the late Brazilian modernist master Oscar Nieymeyer.

CEMITÉRIO DE SÃO JOÃO BATISTA

 (SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST'S CEMETERY)

This huge city of the dead in Botafogo is the final resting place of at least nine presidents of Brazil and a host of celebrities.

Carmen Miranda, the colorful singer and dancer rests here along with pioneering aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont and important mineral geologist Orville Adelbert Derby.

Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim, composer of the legendary "Girl from Ipanema" and his collaborator, Vinicius de Moraes, also a significant Brazilian poet and diplomat in addition to being a composer, also rest in peace here.