Today was my last day in Rio de Janeiro, and I want to put in a plug for a great guidebook that I found totally by chance. While I used Lonely Planet more frequently to find out info about the tourist attractions, this book was more essential to helping me get around easily and adapt to life in Brazil. What's the name?
Rio for Partiers
This is surprising because I am far from a partier, in fact if I saw this book in a bookstore I definitely would skip right over it based on its title! But I was sitting on the airplane from Iguazu Falls, and the woman next to me was reading the most informative book, with picture diagrams of different foods, itineraries by day of week, what to do on a rainy day... I thought it was going to be an Eyewitness Guide, but it turned out to be Rio for Partiers!
For me, the best parts of the book were:
1) How to dress. This is actually what got me really aware of how Carioca men dress. And following the advice worked - I was asked for directions three times in Rio!
2) A picture dictionary of all of the street food and snacks you'll encounter. They also had restaurant food, but it was the snack food that was most helpful. For example, the tear drop-shaped fried thing will always have shredded chicken inside!
3) A picture dictionary of the main fruits you'll encounter at the juice bar. Importantly, it has both Portuguese and English, so you know what you're ordering.
The only negatives are some slight inaccuracies in the maps, as well as really blatant combination of editorial and advertising. But the writing is actually pretty strong (and one of the contributors I noticed also contributed to my Lonely Planet guide). I got mine in a bookstore in Rio, but I just checked and it looks like you can order it from Amazon here.
