What's the best hotel in Rio?
 

What is considered the best place to stay in Rio. We will be going there for pleasure not business.<BR>Thank-you

Well, there will be many opinions on this but there seems to be two different schools of thought on this: The Copacabana Palace in Copacabana of course which is the best hotel in all of Latin America. Or the Ceaser Park which is located on what most people think is a better neighborhood Ipanema beach. The Copacabana Palace is old world style modeled after the Negresco in Nice France and it has a full size pool on the grounds. The Ceaser Park has a small dip pool on the roof with a fantastic view.

Definitely not the Sofitel Rio Palace..It was horrible

We really enjoyed the Inter-Continental at Sao Conrado Beach. The rap on it would be that you would need to take a cab or car hire to get up to Copabana, Ipanema, the Hippie Fair, night spots, etc. But in terms of the hotel itself, it is a full service resort hotel with excellent restaurants, a wonderful outdoor pool area with several pools and what we felt was a very helpful, friendly staff. The beach is right across the street and it's not crowded wall to wall like Copacabana and Ipanema are. You might also want to check out the Club Level if you like a little extra measure of luxury.

I used to think it was the Debret but the last time I stayed there they put a charge on my bill for an 8 hour phone call that I didn't make for $150. If they don't correct this soon I will not let up on the negative press until they refund me the money they stole from me.

Wow, Dondiego--that's unbelievable! I'm sorry and hope you get things settled w/o too much more aggrevation. Did you use a credit card and dispute it in writing? I once had an erroneous $100+ charge on a bill from a cruiseship, which after some doing, (both in writing and by working my way up the food chain via the phone) was removed. I'm American and found out that our rights w/the CC companies for offshore/international charges are not the same as w/charge disputes here at home...In the end, it all worked out but it was a pain in the you-know-where!<BR>Debbie

Yes Debbie your right I should have contacted the credit card company but I have been staying at this hotel for years and thought they would simply just fix the mistake. But I have already spent $83 in telephone calls to Brazil and now they don't even answer my emails. Even though I have stayed there for years I always noticed small problems with the bill everytime, for example different rate than originally promised, phone calls I didn't make and so on but it never amounted to $150. They always seemd to add on about an extra $50 but now I have had enough and Im not going to let this one go so easy.