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Published: April 6th 2011
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So we arrived in Sao Paulo in the late afternoon and didn´t do very much as we felt quite tired after our bus but we´d planned an action packed sightseeing tour for the following day. Sao Paulo is enormous. There are around 20 million people living in this city and it holds about 33% of Brazil´s entire population. That said, it doesn´t seem that manic, probably because the city spans out so wide. Apparently it rivals the Italians foodwise- they have their heritage so the cuisine is heavily influenced by Italian cooking so after our tea we bought some great Italian influenced ice cream for dessert- 7 pounds for 2 scoops! There are tonnes of ´Heladarias´in South America...it´s hard resisting them!
The dorm room we had booked in was a bit horrendous though. In the morning Brendan rightly declared ´Our room is nothing but a hallway´and it really was...we were literally the room that connected to another one so people were wandering in and out all night. That first night we had the world´s worst snorer which even woke me up. Brendan was huffing and puffing then threw a ball of paper at him to shut him up. The Snorer
must have realised because when we woke up he wasn´t there... he´d taken himself downstairs in the lounge room to give us peace!
After stepping off the metro we were greeted with what can only be described as a Brazilian transvestite in uniform. I´m unsure what exactly was happening, I think it was some sort of entertainment or political message. Plus he made his mouth move in such a weird way...either way the cap was out accepting Brazilian reals.
Next stop was the Municipial market which is an indoor food market selling the usual...cheese, olives, cured meat, fresh fruit and veg, dried fruit etc. We pretended to be interested in a certain stall just to get a few samples. I loved all the displays so took a few pictures.
After lunch at the market we visited the second tallest building to take some panoramic shots of the city (I say second because we weren´t allowed up the first because we didn´t have our passports on us- ID is needed for everything but we didn´t want to carry it around). The views were brilliant...it felt like the city went on and on.
That night we decided to
go out for pizza. We went with some Aussies we met whilst we were waiting for a taxi. (The pizza here is supposedly better than Italy too.) Afterwards we thought we´d go for a drink or two. It was about 10.30-11pm and we were wondering around the streets for about half an hour looking for bars, but everywhere was shutting. We wandered further until we reached what looked like the city´s red light distict. Brazil is very big on sex shops. You´ll see a shop for "Erotic clothing" next to a bakery. There were some people gathered outside a club drinking beer...just hanging around waiting for it to open. The reason we couldn´t find a bar was because they were all closing in time for the clubs opening...turns out we were out too early!
Cover charges were around 30 pounds which means minimum spend is that amount so we left it and decided to head back to the hostel. Not overly impressed with Sao Paulo to be honest, the time we had there was definitely enough...didn´t need any longer.
That night we headed to Florianopolis with an overnight bus. Another beach town for us!
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