Sheraton Barra Hotel and Suites, Rio de Janeiro

The Sheraton BARRA in Rio offers, hands down, the best over-all hotel experience in RIO. Though not in the central beach area of Copacabana and Ip�nema, this is actually a plus. You can walk around just like the residents of the surrounding luxury condominiums and have an authentic, albeit, upper-class experience of the real Rio. Copacabana and Ipanema are definitely worth a few visits. But the beaches there are dirty, and the neighborhoods pretty rough, with several big favelas dumping their population into Copa and Ipanema, to make a not so honest living all the time. Copacabana offers another hotel which compares to the Sheraton BARRA. And it's definitely NOT the over-rated Copacabana Palace - great if you get one of the few oceanview rooms there; but that's a 1 in 8 chance in this quadrangular hotel with 8 sides - 4 front sides & 4 inside court sides. I'm talking about the Sofitel Rio, formerly known as the RIO PALACE - the most sophisticated hotel in town. This hotel offers the most complete and polished service, and one of Rio's best Continental Restaurants. The problem with the Sofitel, which has smaller balconies in ALL rooms and with good views for the most part, is, SADLY, that once you step out of this luxurious "enchanted", "Brazilian fantasy," you are faced with the other extreme - beggars, homeless kids, pimps and prostitutes: transvestites and real women. The BARRA Sheraton offers you total isolation from this reality. We all know there is mind boggling poverty in the Third World, but who wants to stay in the middle of it at U$400 to $500 per night? And the misery is made all the worse by the mind blowing contrast between the Rio Palace Sofitel, and the real Copacabana once you're outside. At the Sheraton BARRA, this is not the case. At least not yet. Enjoy yorselves at the Sheraton BARRA. The BARRA is not as far as most people would want you to believe. And its Sheraton is the newest (3 years old) 5 star hotel, and most state of the art property - suitable for tourists, businessmen, and convention goers alike. The hotel's location in today's Rio offers an experience of what Copacabana must have been like 50 years ago. At night from the Barra Sheraton, you can walk, totally carefree, around the beach, and sit in the still rustic kiosks, eat and drink with the locals. In Copacabana, as its mostly 50 to 75 year old hotels desperately try to keep the spot as THE tourist place (and it is), commerce and the city have spent a fortune in new projects. But they can't hide the fact it's surrounded by poverty. These include Copacabana's brand new hi-tech kiosks, where EVERYONE is assumed to be a gringo, and you'll mostly meet fellow tourists or tourist seekers, usually not having your best interests in mind. Back to BARRA, the hotel's rooms are awesome, the balconies ovesized. Few hotels in Copacabana or Ipanema have balconies at all, and NONE have balconies this size, all with beautiful ocean views. Take it from me, who lives here, and spent a week there while my apartment was being refurbished last month, THIS is Rio's best option - in terms of location, in terms of luxury, in terms of comfort, the good life and the best value for your money.