Renato's apartment is quite wonderful as it is large ( 2 bedrooms), well-appointed with lots of kitchen equipment and a large fridge, located near such major tourist sites as the Municipal Theatre and the Museum of Fine Arts, lots of restaurants on nearby Rua Rio Braco, a taxi stand around the corner on Pres. Wilson street, and a nearby Metro station, Cinelandia.

As host, Renato was an excellent email correspondent and has equipped his apartment with a multitude of Rio tourist guidebooks as complete as my library in Baltimore ( except most of his are in Portuguese) as well as a number of very interesting and beautiful Rio photo books.

Also handy was the shopping cart with wheels to pick up heavy items at the nearby supermarket (about 4 blocks away-10-15 minute walk for seniors).

The fantastic view of Sugarloaf out of the picture windows is accurately shown on Renato's website. This panoramic view was a delight to return to after a long day of touring Rio.

The only difficulty we had in the apartment was the very slow wifi for email and web searches to contact or view tourist site info. Renato apologized for that but said it was a problem all over Brazil and since we had similar problems as explanations in our apartment in Sao Paulo, so be it.