The days
The shape of the 3 days
Hours of planned activity. A day beyond the city counts door to door.
- City daySanta Teresa or Copacabana5–7 h
- City dayChrist the Redeemer, Sugarloaf, and Selarón9 h
- City dayTijuca Forest or Rocinha7.5–10 h
A typical route. Yours follows your dates, pace, and interests.
Why this order
- The first day stays closeThe first day carries nothing long, and in a city this cut up that means not crossing it twice.
- Long days stay apartThe one long day takes the middle of the trip.
- No day leaves the cityAt three days the route stays inside Rio, at every pace.
- Similar experiences do not collideA hang gliding flight and a helicopter ride never share a day, and neither do two kinds of samba.
- Road time countsTime on the road is counted as time, not as a footnote.
Pages from a Rio de Janeiro edition
The full Rio guide, page by page
Complete guides from $19
See a real Rio guideNo day leaves the city. The whole question is the order of the three that stay.
Three days is the shortest trip this route will build, and in Rio the map decides it before you do. Ilha Grande is a fourteen-hour day. Arraial do Cabo is the same. Petrópolis is twelve. None of them appears in a three-day route at all.
Looking for the broader city guide? Read the Rio de Janeiro page.
City day5–7 h
Santa Teresa or Copacabana
The first day stays in one neighborhood
The first day carries nothing long, and in a city cut into pieces by granite that matters more than it sounds: a short day here is a day that does not cross the city twice.
What fits is one neighborhood done properly. Copacabana often takes it. Roberto Burle Marx redrew the promenade in 1970 and kept its wave, black basalt against white stone, four kilometers that read as a single line from above.
Or Santa Teresa, reached by the yellow bonde across arches that were built as an aqueduct.
Or swap for
- The Feira Hippie, held on Sundays since 1968
City day9 h
Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf, and Selarón
The day that takes nine hours
Christ the Redeemer stands on Corcovado, inside the forest. Sugarloaf rises at the mouth of the bay. With the Selarón steps they make the longest day this route keeps, about nine hours, and as much of it goes to the city between the summits as to the summits themselves.
In every route we build it goes second, and at three days there is no other place for it: it needs a day on each side, and only the middle day has both.
With Signature, this day carries an original audio guide of its own, saved before you go and playing without a signal.
City day7.5–10 h
Tijuca Forest or Rocinha
The day the city opens up
The last day is the widest of the three. Nothing on it takes a whole day, and it spreads across more of the city than either of the others.
The forest above the city leads it. Coffee took these slopes bare, and from 1861 enslaved workers under Major Archer planted about a hundred thousand trees by hand. The forest's springs still feed part of the city, and Taunay falls thirty-five meters through it.
Or the day goes to Rocinha, with a guide from the community, along the lanes and stairways its residents use to get home.
Or swap for
- A samba circle that forms on the steps and holds the street
When to go
Drier months · May–Oct
- Jan29°135
- Feb30°130
- Mar29°135
- Apr28°95
- May26°70
- Jun25°45
- Jul25°40
- Aug26°45
- Sep25°55
- Oct26°85
- Nov27°100
- Dec29°135
Day °CRain mm
The difference
Your 3 days in Rio. Built around you.
This is the shape. Build the route that fits inside it.
Complete guides from $1930-day money-back guarantee · One-time purchase
| What you get | This page | Yours |
|---|---|---|
| A typical route, day by day | ||
| Matched to your dates, pace, and interests | ||
| Up to 15 activities, by trip length | ||
| Up to 12 hotels and 12 restaurants | ||
| A PDF of up to 13 pages and a web guide | ||
| Audio guides at up to four highlights | Signature |
What changes, and what stays fixed
Pace
Pace does not change the shape at this length. One long day, at every pace.
Last day
The last day is the one your answers move, and it reaches more of the city than the others.
Travel party
Who you travel with changes what the first and last days offer, never the middle one.
Opening days
Where a place has verified closed days, they are shown with it, to check against your dates.
The coast three days never reaches
Everything worth leaving Rio for runs twelve hours or longer, and none of it fits here. Ilha Grande is fourteen hours door to door, on a UNESCO coast where a state park keeps the forest reaching the sand. Petrópolis is twelve, the emperor's summer city more than 800 meters above the heat.
Five days makes room for one of them. Seven makes room for two. Three days does not reach the coast at all, and a page that suggested otherwise would be describing a trip the route does not build.
Questions, answered
Does the route assume I have already arrived?
Is three days enough for Rio?
Should Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf be on the same day?
Can I get to Ilha Grande in three days?
Why does the order matter so much here?
Before you go
