Sao Paulo


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South America » Brazil
April 21st 2011
Published: April 21st 2011
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Our journey to Sao Paulo took over 24 hours via Dubai airport, got a good view of the tallest building in the world though. It looks pretty weird when none of the other buildings are even close to it's size. We were pretty confused when we arrived in Sao Paulo, we didn't know whether to sleep or not but our bodies decided for us and we slept for about 12 hours from 8pm through loud music and people coming in and out of the dorm. Brazil is expensive and from sleeping in hotels in one of the cheapest countries in the world we had to go to dorms which were 4x the price. Sao Paulo is huge, I think it's 19 million people and so it's the third biggest in the world. We stayed in a nice area called Vila Madalena which has plenty of bars and is a bit bohemian. Unfortunately our jetlag didn't really go for the whole time we were there and the best we managed were a few drinks in our hostel which was pretty lively. There were a few people who had clearly been staying there a long time including a weird American guy who would walk around shouting and making weird noises to himself. On our first full day we took the metro to the centre and had a walk around just having a look. It's quite how I imagined it, glass facade tower blocks with palm trees and the odd nice cathedral or theatre. There were a lot of people shouting and banging flip flops together which we decided was some sort of preaching. A few had a crowd, others were clearly just a bit loco. There were a fair few homeless around as well, I guess Brazil is famous for having a massive rich-poor gap. It's quite nice to walk around during the day, there were markets on, street performers dressed as angels and some quite nice parks. Later we went for pizza which S.P is apparently famous for and they have the best in the world (according to Lonely Planet). When we saw the prices we couldn't believe it (over £20) but we realised they were monster sized and we struggled through one cholesterol filled 4 cheese pizza between us which was pretty damn good. The next day it pissed it down. We spent our time watching football on tv and chatting to people in the hostel before setting off for Rio the next day. We didn't really get a chance to experience the city properly, people we've since met who have lived there say that it's a great place to live. A guy gave us a lift to the metro station and told us that in Sao Paulo people live to work but in Rio it's all about having a good life (he wasn't exactly selling it but I guess a lot of places look work obsessed compared to Rio). I think it's the kind of city you need to know someone to know where to go as there are few tourist sights.

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