DAY SIX
thursday, October 2, 2025
highlights OF ‘The marvelous city’
Today we had a full day to explore some of the main sights of Rio, nicknamed ‘the marvelous city.’ And it was a pretty big three: Christ the Redeemer, the Selarón Steps, and Sugarloaf Mountain.
We started out with a visit to Christ the Redeemer, a massive statue on top of Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca National Park, named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. It’s (understandably!) a destination for so many Christians around the world, and probably Rio’s most popular tourist site.
You get to the statue by a tram that takes you up and down the mountain, so we gathered as a group at the base and waited in a pretty organized line before getting on for our trip up to the top.
Passed by a few jackfruit trees out of the window on the way up!
Getting to the top, it was a short walk to the base of Christ the Redeemer. And the scale of it really hits you when you’re standing under it – I understand why it would be a pilgrimage for so many!
Christ the Redeemer was built….
While I thought it was majestic for sure, as a non-Christian I don’t know that it had the same emotional impact that it would have for a believer. It also coincidentally happened to be Yom Kippur today (the most important day in the Jewish calendar), which I was already feeling a bit guilty about not being home in NYC for, so I was feeling a certain way about instead being at Christ the Redeemer of all places! That doesn’t take away from the impact of getting to see the scale of this incredible world wonder, and I’m glad that I did, but it was, I don’t know, a little loaded.
Putting that aside, it was entertaining to watch people trying to take their picture with such a tall angle!
It was windy and a little chilly, and pretty crowded too, so a few of us went down to the café for a coffee and hot chocolate break.
All in all, I understand why
Our next stop wasn’t on our official itinerary, so it was a nice surprise from Lucas: the Selarón Steps in the Santa Teresa neighborhood. They were created by Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón, who moved to Rio in the late 1980s and ended up turning this staircase into his life’s obsession. What started as a small renovation outside his home slowly became a full-scale art project (and eventually his legacy) as he covered the steps in thousands of tiles from all over the world.
Selarón was notoriously eccentric and loved being part of the spectacle himself, often posing on the steps in his signature red shorts and flip-flops. He funded the project by selling his own paintings, constantly reworking sections of the steps because, to him, the piece would never truly be finished while he was alive. (To make this darker, he was found dead at the top of the stairs in 2013, apparently by burning himself alive (!), but they’ve called it suspicious circumstances…)
There are tiles that depict all sorts of things, but travel is very well represented and Lucas challenged us each to find a tile with our hometown/country on it. NYC was an easy one, as were some of the bigger cities and countries that most of our group was from, but Celeste is from the tiny Isle of Man in the UK and she even found a tile for herself! There really is representation of everywhere.
Yes I was traipsing around Rio in essentially flip flops because all of my other shoes were still wet from Iguazu Falls 😅
Selarón put imagery of an African pregnant woman all over the steps. He never really explained her, just saying that she represented a “personal problem from the past.”
I loved that we got to see this. Felt like walking through his creative obsession. Next time, will go when it’s less crowded!
Leaving the steps, we headed back to the hotel to have lunch and relax on our own for a bit before heading out to our late afternoon excursion to the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain.
To get to the mountain, you take two different cable cars, the first one from Praia Vermelha to Morro da Urca, which is the smaller mountain in front of Sugarloaf, and the second that takes you from Morro da Urca to the Sugarloaf peak.
Lucas smartly knew that the crowds would start to get crazy at the entrance to the second cable car, since everyone wants to be on Sugarloaf for sunset (as did we), so after the first ride we didn’t waste any time and immediately got in line for the second.