The apartment offered by Natércia is in an excellent location - close to the beach, shops, stores, the metro. Basically, it has all the necessary things you will want or need while vacationing in Rio. Her communication with me prior to renting was fantastic!

The 10th floor apartment is small but very nice. It has floor to ceiling windows on one wall that offer a wide angle view. There are no buildings blocking this view nor neighbors who can look into the apartment. This makes it very private which is something I like very much, privacy!

I would definitely consider renting the apartment in the future if some improvements are made.

What improvements are needed? Here is a short list in order of importance.
1) The bed needs to be replaced!! I slept terribly the entire stay. The mattress had a hole as if a 500 pounds person slept in the middle and crushed it completely. There was no way to avoid it. One night another problem occurred while I was tossing and turning, the bed actually collapsed! After inspection I found that at least one corner was supported by a paint can. Anyway, if you are like me and need a nice bed to sleep, you will not find that here, not at the moment at least. Please replace the bed!
2) The shower is a skinny rectangle, approximately 2 feet by 5 feet (65cm x 170 cm). The strange part is the shower head comes out of the long wall and projects out on an angle across the skinny 2 foot wide width. I am 6’2” (188cm) and when standing under the shower ONLY my head gets sprayed water! To do the lower parts of my body I had to turn the water pressure down to a sprinkle so the water would drop vertically onto my legs! 1 of 2 things could be done to fix this. Simply replace the shower head with a shower head that goes straight down (ie – a rain shower) or and in my opinion the better solution, would be to open up a channel and move the shower head around to the 2 foot wide wall and spray the water the LONG way down the shower. Then you would have way more room to take an enjoyable shower.
3) The air conditioner – this is more of a grumble than a complaint. The a/c is in the upper right corner of the large window that uses vertical blinds. This leaves only three choices at night: close the blinds with no a/c; leave the blinds closed with a/c on but then the blinds rattle all night; or leave the blinds open two feet with the a/c running and be woken very early by the morning sun/early light coming in!

With these fixes, I would give it a 5 star rating as it would be a great place to stay.