Pinacoteca

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This past Wednesday was a holiday in São Paulo and I asked about a half dozen different people what the holiday was for and no one could tell me for sure. All I could gather is about 7 years ago the government in São Paulo decided to make July 9th a holiday for something honoring when the state was founded. Anyways, because everyone had a day off, my coworker Ricardo told me he would take me around São Paulo that day so I could see a bit more of the city.

I meet Ricardo and his girlfriend in the morning where we started off the day with a cup of “garapa” (sugar cane juice) flavored with lemon which was fantastic as you would imagine. The only problem was that it gave me a pretty bad headache because I instantly got a sugar high. Our first stop off the metro was to the Museum of Sacred Art which I was really excited about going. It is basically a museum of all sacred church artifacts throughout Brazil’s history. When we got off the metro though, we asked a security guard how to exit the station for the museum and he informed us that the museum was closed today in honor of a nun that had recently passed away. We then decided to go back a few metro stops to one called “Luz” which had a few museums, a park and the metro station itself was interesting because it was brought over piece by piece from England. The station was beautiful; the inside looked like Harry Potter and the Weasleys should be running through the corridor at any minute to catch the Hogwarts Express.

We first walked around the park which was really nice. When we were walking around I noticed that for some reason there were a lot of women that were wearing all pink. When I mentioned my observation to Ricardo he told me that they were prostitutes. Hah! …I could not believe it. I could not believe that they would be out during the day time in an otherwise “family” park but also that most of the women were probably over the age of 50. I wanted to take pictures to show y’all how obvious they were but thought it might be slightly inappropriate :-)

We ended up going to a museum called Pinacoteca which had everything from abstract to fine art. I think some of the most impressive work in the museum was by a Brazilian artist (forget his name) who was famous for his paintings of indigenous/rural people dated about 100 years ago. Some of them really were quite remarkable because they were a small insight to the living conditions of the people of that day. We ended our day at Pinacotecca by heading out the café attached to the museum for what else but mini cups of super sweet coffee and pão de queijo. My favorite.

So my “things I learned in São Paulo” factoid: Do not EVER wear all pink here….I may get more than I bargain for.

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Photos

Luz
The Luz metro station which was brought over from England

The park
This is a front of the park and the cafe where we had coffee and pão de queijo

In the park
I just thought this waterfall in the park was pretty

Pinacoteca
The museum

Comments

[Carrie]

Harry....
Hogwart Express.....wow....somebodies' a certified Harry Potter fan! Pink is my favorite color....I might have some problems over there. Good to know though.