Curitiba & São Paulo

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An overnight bus saw us arrive in Curitiba very early morning for one day. We were feeling pretty tired after two big, long, hot ‘aggressive tourism’ days at Iguaçu and the bus so we took it easy. We heard Curitiba was a university town with many parks throughout but we thought there was the feeling that it was a public holiday and nothing much was happening downtown. We took ourselves on a walk of the city center viewing many colonial buildings, churches and interesting street art before relaxing for a few hours with an English screening of The Hobbit.

The following morning we were on a bus again to the biggest city in South America, São Paulo for two days. After escaping from customs officials without too much hassle (Courtney was randomly selected while walking on her own, then the whole group of us had to be checked) we checked in and had an orientation walk with the group, taking in the local shopping streets, parks and recommended restaurants. São Paulo has the largest Japanese population outside Japan and we’d heard the sushi was great here so we consulted the guidebooks and traveller’s forums to find a few recommendations. We opted for a reasonable priced (about $25) all you can eat Japanese buffet that included miso, hand rolls, sushi, sashimi, hot rolls, sautéed mushrooms. One of our tour members had never really tried sushi before so feeling quite adventurous he dove in head first and was even using chopsticks by the end of the night proclaiming he was “turning Japanese, I really think so”. From there we went to a karaoke restaurant for some billiards, dutch courage and a few performances by each of us. A great night out!

As our only full day in such a massive city, we hit the ground running with a self-guided walking tour from our Lonely Planet book that took in the highlights of Centro Historico. The highlights included MASPA (art museum with ever changing exhibits), Teatro Municipal theatre, the sight where São Paulo was founded in 1544, the city’s beautiful cathedral (that seats 8000), an ancient São Bento monastery that still practices Gregorian chanting which we were lucky enough to witness, and art deco buildings in the financial district. That night we took another recommendation about São Paulo’s culinary highlights and the best pizza in Brasil at Braz Pizzeria. Considering TripAdvisor lists almost 25,000 restauarants in this city, I think we chose two excellent options!

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