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Sao Paulo

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Another overnight bus, another metrosystem to negotiate at the morning rush hour. We had a recommendation for a good hostel from a girl from the last hostel we were in in Floripa. The metro system in sao Paulo is excellent but it has to be said that it is pretty intimidating when you are trying to keep a track of all your stuff as well as each other and which stop we should get off at. Luckily enough it turned out to be a hassle free trip, before we knew it we emerged out of the Clinicas subway station into the welcoming warm air of Sao Paulo.

The hostel is about 5 minutes walking distance from the subway station so we got ourselves there fairly quickly, the only problem being that they couldn’t let us lie down to catch up on sleep until after the 1 pm. We got sorted eventually and then went out for a wander.

Sao Paulo is massive – 20 million people in the city alone and it is surrounded by several significantly sized cities such as Santos which in alot of places would be considered part of Sao Paolo. To be honest I knew very little about the place before I got there, I had heard it had the second largest fleet of helicopters in the world and that it was with new york probably the best place to see graffiti. After that I was an open book with what the city had in store.

Our first night there we tried to get in contact with our friend from SP who we met in Santiago. We tried to get thru on her phone but couldn’t get her, we were on our way out the door to a local bar when she called at the front door of the hostel with her boyfriend Fernando, her brother Daniel and his girlfriend Caroline. They had all just knocked off work and were hanging for after work beerage. RESULT!!!

They took us to a part of town I think it was villa madelena. I say think because earlier at dinner myself and Marilyn (mostly me I admit) consumed the best part of a bottle of cachassa, a strong brazillian beverage. So I was in fine fettle and was in my element with the two boys discussing all things soccer and beer related, they were good enough to educate me in the ways of beerage. If anyone goes to Sao Paulo, get into the Chopp Bramha escudo – its the business. So we sat in the bar until 3 in the morning and had a great time, the bars walls were covered in soccer paraphernalia so I was happy out with myself. We arranged to meet the following Thursday so Denise and Daniels Mammy could make us the traditional brazillian meal of Fejoiada.

Now this was Tuesday so that left us two days to ourselves. And we used them nicely, a well deserved sleep in the first day was followed by a trip to a fantastic record store which had everything!! We walked around till our legs hurt and then went to cook some lovely dinner. The next day we took to the streets to explore villa madelena, what a lovely neighbourhood it is. We stopped for some more chopp, the best chocolate cake in the world (the shop actually proclaimed this on the door) (and it was bloody good by the way) before settling into a piano bar where much to my frustration the comically hatted attendees were furiously discussing Xabi Alonsos projected move to Real Madrid. I could understand what they were saying and could understand that they were mixing him up with Xavi Hernandez of Barcelona but I didn’t have the skills to convey such a message. Speaking of which my portugese is woeful, poor Marilyn has to take the burden of translating though she is very good, it must be doubly frustrating when I can really understand everything when it comes to football but when it comes to something practical like directions, money or times of buses I am feckin useless. Oh well.

We met up with Denise and Fernando whose nickname is Bin Laden as he has more than a passing resemblance to the famous terrorist type. They took us around the city to some of the major tourist spots, we stopped for beer and coffee. Some mate was after we had negotiated the human ant hill that is the local street market it was manic, never seen so much unadulterated junk in my whole entire life. It was a bit annoying for Denise and Fernando as they were worried for our safety, pickpockets are notorious in this part but we had a great time taking it all in. We visited an indoor food market which seemed to contain every ingredient and condiment you could possibly want to create any dish in the world, there were free samples so I was happy. Beside this market is a massive block of flats which is completely destroyed and somehow still standing, its nickname is trembly or wobbly or something like that. Its a future sky news headline in the making and really remarkable to look at, its amazing people are in it but whats more remarkable still is the graffiti that marks the outside of it. Its not so much the artistic merit which marks the artwork apart from all else but the sheer dexterity of the artists to paint where they painted it really boggles the mind.  After negotiating a couple of street vendors, one monotoothed legend of a man tried to sell us the single most useless object conceived let alone constructed by mankind – this guy was amazing, his enthusiasm if nothing else would have sold it and I regret not buying the trinket, I probably would have only it was a bit wieldy, oh well… anyways after we successfully negotiated this lad we ascended the largest building in sao Paulo in time to get a view of a beautiful sunset over this humongous metropolis.

After all the sightseeing we were pooped so we went to denises house for dinner. We met her entire family before the meal which was lovely. Feijoada is famous all over brazil, it is basically a festival of beans and rice with some pork bits mixed in. Its super tasty especially when it is consumed with all the trimmings. After eating enough for 5 I retired to the couch to watch sao paolo take a hammering the football, life doesn’t get much better.

We had a bus that night so our time was running short but not short enough to deny us another round of drinks. With Daniel, Denise and Fernando we drank some more before very sadly bidding farewell to them and Sao Paulo at the bus station. In 4 days we covered alot and it has certainly made me eager to return to this awesome city….