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Published: February 28th 2013
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"Do you really want to go to São Paulo?" I ask Sonya for maybe the tenth time since we arrived in Brazil.
It's fair to say I was unenthused about the prospect of visiting Brazil's and what is in fact the Southern Hemispheres largest city. I think after spending five glorious days on the beautiful and serene Ilha Grande, the thought of a city the sheer size of São Paulo with its 18 or so million inhabitants busily scurrying around made me shudder. What's more, we'd spoken to numerous fellow travellers about their time in São Paulo and none of them gave a glowing assessment of the place. We were told there was little to keep you amused, that it was a high-rise concrete jungle and that it was perhaps better left avoided. Nevertheless from Paraty, it made perfect sense to break up our journey to Iguazu falls with a few nights in São Paulo. My preconceptions and I arrived, immediately I was pleasantly surprised, outside the air conditioned bus terminal it was cool in temperature. During our 6 hour bus journey we'd somehow managed to leave the oppressive heat and humidity of Rio de Janeiro state behind. First tick
in the box. We navigated our way to our hostel downtown with ease thanks to the subway. That was another thing that impressed me about São Paulo, the metro system was extensive, trains ran regularly and it was inexpensive - costing around £1 for any journey regardless of how many lines you changed or your destination. Simple.
After a good nights sleep in Escambo hostel, conveniently located just two streets from São Paulo's main drag, Avenue Paulista, we were ready to discover the city. We walked 15 minutes to Parque Ibirapuera, the city's largest area of green land. The sun was shining down on us but like the previous evening but the temperature was pleasant. We had a great morning lazily walking in the park, avoiding skateboarders, sharing ice cream and taking photographs of the many monuments we came across. The park also contains numerous museums and we decided to take a look around São Paulo's Museum of Modern Art. At just $6 Reais each (£2), I thought what a bargain. London take note! We spent an hour or so looking at some weird and wonderful exhibitions and reading the profound descriptions of the pieces of work.
That's the thing about modern art - you see some really creative, off-the-wall stuff. Clever tricks using mirrors and CCTV footage for example but then you read the caption of the piece and you can't help but smile: "This piece is a microcosm of Brazilian society, demonstrating the inequalities...' Blah blah blah. I appreciated the work but not the overelaborate and often nonsensical descriptions. Or maybe that's just me being uncultured! From there we headed to one of São Paulo's tallest buildings, Edificio Italia. Between
3-4pm every day, admission to the viewing platform on the 37th floor is free so being the cheapskate backpackers we are, we waited until
3pm on the dot and took the lift to the lookout. From here we enjoyed some decent views of the city and it's rows and rows of sky-scrappers; you see them in every direction, literally hundreds and hundreds of high rise office buildings and apartment blocks. By this time though the clouds had descended and there was even a thunderstorm in the distance so the views and our pictures weren't brilliant. As we made our way home we got caught in rain showers, I remember Sonya looking at me incredulous, we
had only been away from home for just over two weeks but rain seemed so alien to us already. It was a welcome downpour and a nice end to our first day sightseeing.
São Paulo has a fantastic reputation when it comes to gastronomy. It's multicultural make-up means you can find sushi, Italian, gaucho grills and even a good honest burger place, all on the same street. However we did not have the best experience, after aimlessly walking around our neighbourhood in search of a nice, cheap restaurant we settled on a Italian restaurant nearby. The menu was solely in Portuguese, we had been in this predicament before. Speaking two words of Portuguese and being able to read about the same, this was going to be a good old game of 'restaurant roulette' - we settled on pizza, it was the safe option as the menu read 'Pizza' but which kind... I closed my eyes, drew a circle with my finger and stopped. 'Pizza Pomadora to share, that'll do nicely.' We chatted over a beer until our dinner arrived, I could see cheese, tomatoes and green olives - I despise olives! There was also something sprinkled over
every inch of the pizza, like a golden crust of breadcrumbs. I meticulously picked out the olives and took a bite, it was garlic - a hundreds and thousands type sprinkling of garlic which overpowered us both. We were starving so we scraped some of the garlic dressing off and finished what we could and paid the bill. The plan then was to sample some of São Paulo's night life but stinking like a French man's pocket and with a garlic induced headache we retreated back to our hostel, right after I stopped at a street vendor to buy a pack of chewing gum!!
We were leaving São Paulo the next evening but we still had time to visit the Museum of Football, much to Sonya's excitement ha! Located at the Estadio do Pacaembu - home to current FIFA world club champions, Corinthians - the museum of football was my ideal last day in the city. The admission fee of £2 was again surprising, São Paulo was proving excellent value for money. Inside the museum, you discover how the beautiful game came to Brazil and how it soon became its national sport, you are reminded of the country's five World Cup winning campaigns and you look on in amazement at videos of some the country's greats, Pele et al, in action. There's also some great interactive attractions; you can hear and play along in commentating on goals of days gone by, you can experience the intense roar of the crowds from recordings taken in the stadium and you even get the chance to take a penalty against a holographic goalkeeper. I took the chance to step up and with on looking Brazilian I thought better of trying to demonstrate any flair and embarrassing myself, instead I fired my spot kick into the bottom right corner at 89km per hour, sending the fake goalie the wrong way. Possibly the best penalty I've ever taken. Shoulders back, chest puffed out, I leave the museum a happy man.
That's was all we had time for during our two days in São Paulo. We both had a fantastic time, much to my surprise. The city has so much to offer tourists in terms of sights, culture and entertainment and with friendly and helpful residents, São Paulo certainly gets the thumbs up from me. I guess the moral of this blog post is life is full of surprises; cities and pizzas! Hope you enjoyed the read. Thanks, Jon
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