Cities and their planners always look for a determined angle to show themselves to the rest of the world. And Rio de Janeiro has chosen to be seen from top, from the heights of Corcovado or Sugarloaf. And the sight, of course, is usually spectacular, even when fog conspires against the view and turns everything a little greyish. The “view from the top” allows us to see one of the city’s most spectacular features: its huge number of green spaces, distributed everywhere we see. And that physical space, spattered with morros (hills), impresses anyone who dares to see it under the shadow of the huge Christ and his famous open arms.

Of course, choosing a view point to represent oneself implies to eliminate others, at least as generalized representations. Because, when seen up close, Rio loses spectacularity but gains a much richer view in a human sense. This look is not, necessarily, touristically relevant. Rather, it’s the empoverished side that can be seen, for example, when we arrive to Rio by bus. The city’s bus terminal -Rodoviaria, as they call it in Brazil- it’s almost chaotic, particularly on weekends. As soon as we arrived, we found hundreds of people staring at us from the second floor, behind bars, while we struggled to find our luggage. And the surroundings are definitely not quite attractive. Abandoned sheds, dark streets covered by highways and a local bus terminal in poor conditions. I don’t think anyone who sees that area will have an splendorous image of Rio. But it’s a side one has to see.

To choose between two views, from under and from top, is nothing but an attempt to classify a city. In between, there’s many other views, places, details that might help us form an image of a city. An image that, of course, will be as arbitrary as other ones. An image that will be not only the result of our own direct experiences, but will also be clearly influenced by other sources, such as tv shows, travel guides, third parties stories, among many options.

To put some order here, the next entries about Rio will begin from the top; that is, how to get to the different viewpoints of the city, such as Corcovado and Sugarloaf, and will then lower to the surface, towards bairros (towns) such as Ipanema, copacabana or Santa Teresa -where, by the way, we stayed at. Finally, there’ll be references to the topic of public transportation, because it’s always good to learn how to move around the city without depending on taxis.