Lapa and Santa Teresa

Two well-known neighborhoods in Rio are the Lapa and the Santa Teresa neighborhoods. The Selaron Steps that were featured in the previous post straddle these two neighborhoods. After leaving the tiled steps, we drove through parts of these neighborhoods. 

The Lapa area is a Bohemian neighborhood known for its art, bars, music clubs, dance halls, antique stores, and restaurants. 



The Santa Teresa neighborhood is a hilltop village with winding narrow cobblestone streets and hairpin turns. There are beautiful vistas of the city below as you wind your way up to the top. Lining the streets are boutiques, hotels, artist studios, restaurants, and a few mansions. Guilherme took us to a restaurant in the Santa Teresa neighborhood. We didn't catch the name of the restaurant, but it was a small, quaint, open-air restaurant in the heart of the bustling neighborhood. 

The restaurant where we ate lunch

Since Guilherme was local, we told him to order for us, and that we wanted some authentic Brazilian food. He decided on a dish that included rice, black beans, green cabbage with garlic, sausage, jerked beef (is that another way of saying beef jerky?), and cracklins or pork bellies. The way he talked, it sounded like everything was mixed up and served together in one dish like a stew. That was a little scary, considering some of the ingredients (cracklins? Jerked beef?). Oh, well, when in Rome... 

Before our meal came, Guilherme insisted that we try a popular local drink. He told us to go behind the counter and watch the bartender make the drink. Since the people here know Guilherme (as does everyone in Rio), we were allowed. In fact, they encouraged Joe to video him making the drink. We don't know what the drink was called, but it was made with a very high potency (100%) alcohol, lime juice, sugar, ice cubes, and maybe one or two other things. After adding the ingredients, the bartender shook it up and poured it into a glass. He handed it to Joe with a straw. Since we were both going to try it, we asked for two straws. Here's where the miscommunication due to the language barrier came in. He got real excited when we said "two straws" - he obviously understood the word two, but not the word straws - and immediately began making another drink. Well, after one sip, I knew I wasn't going to have a whole drink to myself, so we tried very hard to tell him two straws, not two drinks. We kept saying two and pointing to the straws in a very loud (almost shouting) voice. I guess you think people can understand you better if you talk louder! However, our lively shouts and gesticulations apparently were not clear, because shortly after we returned to our table, he showed up with the second drink. We had to disappoint him as Guilherme explained that we merely wanted one more straw and not another drink.

When the food came, it was in separate dishes rather than all mixed together. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that I could certainly fill up on rice, which was in a dish by itself, if the rest of the food was not to my liking. As it turns out, the rice and black beans were very good. The green cabbage and garlic was an unusual dish - the cabbage was very green and looked like kale or spinach but was definitely cabbage taste, and the garlic gave it a good flavor. And thankfully the "jerked beef" was not their way of saying beef jerky. Rather the jerked beef was more like smoked ham and was actually quite good.

After lunch we continued our drive through the Santa Teresa neighborhood, enjoying the views. Here are some pictures we took while driving in Santa Teresa. 

















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