24 hours in Rio de Janeiro

Deciding how to spend 24 hours in a city between flights is always a challenge. In the case of Rio de Janeiro, my particular challenge is whether to take the approach of using the Linx Airport Hotel with its ease of access, or to throw caution to the winds and take a taxi to head off to one of the more luxurious hotels on the City’s famous beaches. For a flight arriving at 11pm, there is no option of using the bus service to Copacabana/Ipanema and taxis are expensive. Has anyone else been faced with such a dilemma?

Ekond – Many thanks for your very helpful comments. The situation is probably exacerbated by the fact that we will be arriving late on a Sunday night. On the basis of your comment about ETA at a beach hotel, we will probably opt for the Linx.

On a separate issue, do you happen to know what the BA lounge is like at GIG and how accessible it is 4 hours or so before departure?

EruditeSheep

This is Rio for goodness sake not Dusseldorf!!
It doesn’t matter what time it is – get to one of the decent hotels on Ipanema. What do you want to see when you open your curtains in the morning?…

I did a 48 hour version of this last year. Get on line and find one of the excellent personal tour guides. Expensive but really good value if you get the right one. I recommend Neyla – look her up on tripadvisor. I in fact had one of her other guides Mathilde, who was excellent – knowledgable and entertaining. You can agree your itinerary in advance. An early start may not be so feasible given your late arrival – usual recommended for heading up to Christ the Redeemer – but maybe that can be done towards the end of the day, The guide can take you around to all the sights/take you up Sugar Loaf etc, with speed and ease that is not possible under your own steam.

Book your taxi online in advance, local pickups are not recommended for tourists.

And for goodness sake don’t bother to be at the airport four hours before to go to a BA lounge – have another hour in a bar in Ipanema over a Caipirinha!

Come on EruditeSheep – shake it up a bit!

Many thanks to all of you for your helpful comments. We have now returned to the UK and can report that our day in Rio was a resounding success! We followed Falcon/Hermes’s advice, staying at the Marriott at Copacabana and using a yellow taxi for the transfer from the airport to hotel. There was absolutely no hassle in using yellow taxis for trips around Rio – they were not at all expensive, especially for a visit to the Jardim Botanica, which provided a tranquil break from the bustle of the beach area. We didn’t want to do the usual tourists sights (Sugar Loaf etc), since we had visited those as part of a cruise tour several years ago.

OK, being a Marriott Gold Member also helped in providing a great ocean front room and access to the Executive Lounge, which we were able to retain until 9pm. Once again, using a yellow taxi back to the airport was no hassle. I concur with Falcon in that Terminal 1 and the BA lounge at GIG is still a disgrace – such a contrast to the spacious new TAM lounge at GRU which we used for the outgoing flight and can thoroughly recommend.