Petropolis

[crazy4cruisn]

Anyone go to Petropolis while in Rio? Was it worth the time or would it be better to stay in Rio and do other sites?

[Splinter]

When you are in Rio, you really need to see Corcovado and Sugarloaf and at least drive past the beaches like Ipanema. We did this our first day, then went ot Petropolis on our disembarkation day before going to the airport (we had a red-eye flight home to the USA).

 

If you have time, I can recommend Petropolis. It was a nice drive, and once we got into the mountains it cooled down from 95 degrees to about 80 (this was early December). The Emperor's Palace was facinating (read up on some of this history before you go) and well worth the trip (and one of the few truely wheelchair accessible sites we saw on our trip). This is a resort town where many people from Rio have summer and weekend homes, so they usually drive you around to see some of the nicer homes, and there are some decent shops here.

[Bill S]

We did the same thing as Splinter did: saw the sights in Rio on Day #1 and then went up to Petropolis on Day #2/disembarkation day. We were there in early January, and encountered the same temperatures as did Splinter. We enjoyed our day trip up there especially the outstanding Brazilian lunch! But, we were glad that we had the first day to tour around Rio the day before. Splinter's description of what the sights in Petropolis are like is very good.

Hope you have a great cruise and visit to Brazil!