First, the good things about this flat -- Claudio was quick to respond and has great English, which was important for our group, whose Portuguese skills ranged from none to very limited. It is also a very roomy apartment with 3 bedrooms, and plenty of space for our group of 4. His housekeeper, Adriana, was very kind and went above and beyond for us, although she speaks no English, which did create some issues. The doormen were also very friendly and helpful. The apartment is also on the block next to the beach, and is in a great to location to experience Copacabana.

The problems -- Claudio is in Sao Paulo, and there was no local contact to provide assistance. Adriana, showed us the apartment, and while she is great, we didn't understand much of what she was saying, since she didn't speak English, and we had no way to contact her if there were problems.

The most frustrating experience -- and needlessly frustrating -- arose when we locked ourselves out of the apartment. There are two keys to the apartment, a front and back entrance. However, both were on one key chain, the back door key is very small, we didn't understand how to use the back entrance from Adriana's tour, so we just left both on the same chain. Using what was essentially this one key, and having multiple people in the group, we accidentally miscommunicated one night and left the key in the apartment. This was undoubtedly our mistake, but Claudio was completely unhelpful and had no way to deal with a lockout. We realized we were locked out at 10pm, texted Claudio, who, unusually, did not reply. We were eventually able to communicate to the doorman what had happened, and he had Adriana's number and called her, and she kindly told the doorman she would come and let us in, despite her living an hour away and it being late on a Sunday night. Shortly after we heard from Claudio, whose first text was the useless, "You lost both keys? How did you do that?" Then he told us Ariana would not be coming to let us in. Then he said he had googled a locksmith, gave us the address, and we should go there. We walked the 20 minutes to this address, where there was no such locksmith (and also did not show up in our google searches). After much walking without finding an open locksmith, Claudio eventually agreed to let Adriana come if we paid her (which we of course were happy to do), and we were let in around 2 am, just a few hours before we had to leave for our AM flight.

Also, as other reviewers have noted, this apartment has become quite worn down, in need of a good cleaning, repairs to or replacement of broken furniture, etc.