Sao Paulo - Week 32

19th - 20th April


And so onto Sao Paulo. We were more than a little apprenhensive about going to SP with the reputation it has, but we thought as we were passing so close by it would have been rude not to stop in and see what the place was all about. So after an uneventful 5 1/2 hour bus journey from Paraty we arrived in Sao Paulo at about 4pm. We dumped the bags at the hostel and went on a mission to find the pizza restaurant we had been recommended by a New Yorker we met in Rio. It was apparently dangerous to be walking around the area we were staying in after dark so the race was on! We speed walked for 1/2 hour only to find the restaurant closed! We hadn't eaten since breakfast so couldn't wait for it to open so we settled for the 'emergency burger' solution. We then took a taxi back to the hostel for the night.


Right, Sao Paulo in one day:

We got up early and had done the Lonely Planet walking tour around the centre by 11.30am. There were some pretty churches and buildings, the most beautiful building being the Teatro Municipal. There are lots of green areas all around the city and it was much nicer than we were expecting.

Next stop was the Italiano tower which is the third highest (or something) building in Sao Paulo. The very top (41st) floor had the best view but was a classy restaurant and the snotty maitre d' wouldn't let us in without ordering but we managed to get a pretty good view from the 37th floor:

As you can see the most overwhelming (and perhaps most interesting thing!) about SP is it´s size - it´s flipping huge. All we could see from the Italiano Tower were skyscrapers in all directions. Around 19.7 million inhabitants live in the greater Sao Paulo metropolitan area, making it the fifth most populous metropolitan area in the world. A local bloke we were chatting to in the while waiting for the ATM said that you can drive 2 hours from the citycentre and still be in the city!!

Next we hopped on the metro to go to the 'Memorial do Immograntes' which also had a museum about the massive immigration to Sao Paulo from many different countries all over the world. The building was very interesting and you could see where the immigrants arrived on the train and the massive rooms that were filled with hundreds of beds, sleeping up to 10,000 people while they waited to be moved on to work on the coffee plantations.

After a bargain lunch of meat, rice and chips we got back on the tube to go to the art gallery on the other side of town. Once we got there it was about 3.30pm, very expensive to get in and we were knackered. The thought of wandering round an art gallery for an hour did not appeal so, heathens that we are, we skipped it and went to see '300' at the cinema! (Which was very good, btw).

And after another quiet, safe (!) night in the hostel, we got up early to get the tube/bus to the airport and were on our way to Foz do Iguaçu - so exciting!

Book we read: The Post Office by Charles Bukowski - sad and funny story of a down-and-out in the States.