Two very different, unusual places to stay in Brazil.

A recent post was exclusively about the… exclusive hotel that, by virtue of its… exclusive location, has… exclusive rights to providing tourists with a full-fledged Iguazu Falls experience. This post is less exclusive – well, only just: it’s exclusively (dough!) about two other hotels in Brazil I stayed at recently…

Peak preview pics:

So, which one should I start with? I’ll do them in chronological order…

First up: the Rosewood São Paulo, which, as sharp minds will guess, is in São Paulo. And it’s more than a little unusual…

This ultra-modern (first opened in 2021) hotel with uber-designer interiors at times resembles more an exhibition gallery of different flavors of art. Too bad we only spent one night there. Hopefully we’ll be able to stay longer next time…

Like I say – designer interiors:

Guitars feature heavy – many walls are adorned with them:

The balconies are something too:

And the street view:

The hotel’s located not far from downtown; there are places to walk around and museums to see nearby – alas, those will be for next time. For now, here’s a rather funny door in the hotel room. Or rather, not the door itself, but the slightly warped (concave) mirror on it that makes anyone who looks in it appear much slimmer – including moi! Then I realized the marketing aspect: the slimmer a guest looks – the more courses at dinner downstairs they’ll order! ->

A few photos of São Paulo in the evening taken from the roof of the building where we had dinner with our regional office staff:

Streets at night:

Something unusual on the way from the airport to the center:

A building that took my fancy:

Now for the other hotel…

We had a short break between business here in Brazil and more business in Dubai, for which (short break) we were recommended a low‑key boutique hotel in a rather remote and not too popular seaside spot on the Atlantic coast. So off we flew…

Everything just as promised – right on the ocean shore:

And, just how I like it, almost no other folks around at all! ->

Paradise!

And here’s the boutique hotel ->

Welcome to Kenoa Resort, just south of the Brazilian city of Maceió, here:

It’s a really small hotel – a triangle with sides of 110 x 100 x 85 meters. Everything here feels unusually tiny. Here, for example, is the common area – that’s all there is! ->

And there’s even a sign pointing out the smallness! ->

We arrived quite late in the evening, so the first photos are at night:

Oof! ->

And the following morning…

Steps up onto the roof:

What’s up there?…

Nothing much! ->

Along the outside of the wall it looks like they planted cactuses: Cactus security! ->

But overall, a nice little hotel. Including at night:

An apparent influence of the local indigenous culture, this charming couple indicate the entrance to the unisex restroom by the restaurant! ->

We didn’t dare swim in the ocean: just a bit too choppy ->

We stuck to beach-strolling: safer, and just as pleasant…

Off we set on one such beach stroll…

Fishermen ->

Woah – a whole tuna (not a big one – but from the shore)! ->

Onward…

I felt a bit uneasy pulling out my expensive camera in front of the locals. It can lead to… issues. So when we were walking out, I didn’t take the camera out at all, so as not to provoke anything. And on the way back I took photos while walking away from the places I was shooting…

For example:

Nice way to relax. I’m jealous…

On we go – enjoying the beach, the ocean, and the buildings:

A white King Kong by a swimming pool:

Ocean‑and‑beach views:

Is that a hotel? ->

Here the ocean waves are blocked by a reef ->

Swimming here: possible, comfortable ->

But unfortunately the water’s kind of dirty: murky and featuring household trash. Apparently the current carries all sorts of garbage from the city. Politically correct Google Maps says there’s nothing like that – and just shows the depth of the coastal seabed…

Yandex Maps on the other hand still doesn’t show ocean depths, and instead tells it like it is: yep, the water along the shore is clearly not… clear ->

Clear or not, since it was at least safe, we did take a dip. Then it was time to be heading back…

Today’s was a two‑kilometer stretch that we covered (each way, so 4km round trip) along the ocean shore. And the following day we went the other way along the beach (to the north) – 2.5km x 2:

Sure – we weren’t trying to break any records. (Which reminds me: my longest seaside trek in one day was 23km (both ways, in total) – last year before our Latin American partner conference in the Dominican Republic.) And there are practically no photos of the walk to the north – for everything all looked the same…