Rio de Janeiro Shopping

Brazilian sarongs are unique, beautiful and quite inexpensive. Sellers are everywhere on the beach and are hard to avoid, but these sarongs make an excellent gift to bring back home, or even to use on the beach: ladies wear them, men use them as a beach towel.

This is not a shop as we bought art work from street vendors. In front of Copacabana beach at night there were some painters selling their art work and on the weekend in a park at Ipanema, near the plaza, there were also many people selling art work.

What to buy: Art. We didn´t by the canvases framed. When we got them back home to Chile we had them professionally framed there.

What to pay: It depends on the size of the piece you are purchasing. We paid 40 Reais for a smaller piece and 120 Reais for a larger set of three paintings. You can barter with the painter.

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Rio de Janeiro has numerous fine jewelry stores and one of Rio's top names is Amsterdam Sauer. The Ipanema location houses both the store and the gemstone museum. The store is famous for its huge offer of precious stones and jewelry.
In the on-site museum you can visit a recreation of a Brazilian gemstone mine, where everybody may realize, how difficult is to mine these beautiful stones. The so called imperial topaz, once favoured by the Russian Tzars is mined only in Brazil. It shows also a lot of rough stones and gems.
A very informative and well organized museum.

The museum is open weekdays 10am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 2pm.
Phone: 021/2239-8045 for the museum only.

What to buy: The store sells a wide range of loose coloured stones or set in 18-carat gold, such as, aquamarines, red-orange and pink topaz, tourmalines in a rainbow of shades from green to purple., citrines, and Brazilian opals. but is particularly famous for its fascination with emeralds.

What to pay: Mining for gemstones is not easy and you should expect quite high price, however, it is worth a visit even if you are not looking to buy, what you don’t need and don’t want.
Prices are influenced by the quality and the shade of the stone. For example the imperial topaz start at US70/carat, the darker shades of pink and cherry-red the most expensive.
Sale months are March-April and August-September with reductions of up to 70%!!!

This store has handbags, artwork, wallets, jewelry, sports bags from famous Brazilian designer Gilson Matins. Hollywood types shop here and we spent 2 hours buying here. The staff of the store was great. The selection of "tourist (yet non touristy) itmes" were fantastic. If you want to buy someone an authentic Brazilian item, come here. Prices are reasonable. The leather for the handbags are top quality.

Make sure you ask for VAT to take the discount at the airport.

What to buy: Make up bags with Sugarloaf/Christ the Redeemer on them. Sports bags in the colors of the Brazilian flag, key chains... see photo. Wallets for $30 U.S. I get complimented all the time.

What to pay: Make up bags about $20-$40 U.S. Satchels $100 a piece. See website. It finally has an English version

Havaianas are absolutely great, always regret not buying more. First of all, they are everywhere, on the street corners, in small shops in larger stores, really everywhere (I stayed in Ipanema, but I'm sure they are just as widely available closer to Copacabana). There are some knock-offs (I bought a pair by mistake), but they cost the same and have the same style, but they don't have the name 'havaianas' on them... So they are easy to spot, I made a really stupid mistake, but hey I'm still wearing them and they're just as comfy. The price ranges from about $5 to $10 if I remember correctly (that was about a year ago). In South Africa they pretty much always cost about $25, so for me that was a very good price... Enjoy your trip!!!

Rio Sul is like the typical mall you'd find America, you can find every type of thing you need here. Keep in mind if you're looking for trinkets and souvys there's better places then here, because if you find them they'll be more expensive here. It is a mall after all. A good thing to remember is, if you're looking for a post office, you'll find one where the parking garage is. It's called "Corrieos" and if you can't find a place to mail postcards or something else come to Rio Sul and go up to the level where the parking garage is.

What to pay: You can probably expect typical mall prices. All stores are different, it is a mall after all.

The big ones are ZONA SUL and PÃO DE AÇUCAR, they are big chains of little supermarket that you can find in this part of Rio that we call ZONA SUL.

But the are small business where you can also buy stuffs with quality as well, and almost ways with better prices!

This one is close to my building, so I go there very often, specially to buy my EVERYDAY BOTTLE OF COCA COLA!

It is located at the same street of ZONA SUL SUPERMARKET!

OCTOBER 2007

What to buy: As the name says: MERCATUDO...

MERCA is the short word for MERCADO (Market)
TUDO means ALL or EVERYTHING...

ALL IN A MARKET means MERCATUDO!;) Did I make myself clear????

First it s the best place to have breakfast!!! Yes indeed!!! Very soon I will post a tip in this regard as a RESTAURANT TOPIC, Zona Zul has a bi variety of food for breakfast, in every store you can have a place specially made for you to eat and drink!

Actually it is the most completely supermarket that you can find either in Copacabana or Ipanema!

The one I usually go is located at POSTO SEIS, in the end of Copacabana Beach, corner with Francisco Sá Street and Nossa Senhora de Copacabana Avenue!

As I told you, we always need to buy anything at the Grocer, so close by your place there will be a ZONA SUL!

OCTOBER 2007