Getting there, getting around, feeling at home.

From the international airport (Galeão), count 35 minutes with the house's private driver: R$130 for 3 people with luggage, name sign on arrival. From Santos Dumont, 25 minutes. The same driver stays available during your stay, for evenings out and day trips.

Uber and 99 drop you at Vidigal square on Avenida Niemeyer; the house is a 6-minute uphill walk, or 1 minute by moto-taxi (R$5–10). Some inDrive drivers agree to drive up to the house. The community taxis have official fares from the house:

Vidigal is not a favela like the others, and Cariocas know it: they call it “Rio's safe box”. A single street goes in and out, with a police presence at the entrance — a patrol car, officers on foot — since the 2011 pacification, and the community has its own rules, known to all and enforced by the residents themselves: theft and assault are not tolerated, women are respected. No homeless people in the streets either. People who live here work as taxi drivers and in the hotels and restaurants of Leblon and Ipanema, and rents have long been higher than anywhere else on Rio's hills.

That is also why Vidigal has been drawing people with a choice for fifteen years: David Beckham bought a house here in 2014 for the view, artist Vik Muniz set up his school here, the Sheraton Grand Rio is at the bottom of the street, and the Nós do Morro theatre, founded here in 1986, trained Babu Santana, Thiago Martins, Jonathan Haagensen and Roberta Rodrigues, the faces of City of God. Vila Oriba's owner lived in Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon before settling here: he feels safer here than down below, and that is what our guests write too.

The house is at the entrance of the neighbourhood, on the road to Leblon, a six-minute walk up from the square — a climb the owner makes on foot every day, as do his friends with their children and his 77-year-old parents. The moto-taxi (1 minute) and the community taxis are there for comfort, not for safety. A word of honesty for parents of toddlers: with a pushchair, the climb up Vidigal is not the easiest, and the house's several staircases make the stay a little more athletic — not impossible, but better to know before booking. A caretaker couple lives on site and the team shares its tips on arrival.

Vidigal beach, shared with the Sheraton, is a 7-minute walk below the house. Leblon is 18 minutes on foot along the Avenida Niemeyer coastal road, or 5 minutes by taxi; Ipanema 10 minutes by taxi. The Dois Irmãos trail starts at the top of Vidigal: 40 minutes to an hour uphill with a local guide, for the finest view in Rio. An excellent sushi restaurant is a few steps from the house.