Activity Summary
Saturday 20th January - Day 473
Bus to São Paulo
Dinner at Fogo de Chão Jardins (Brazilian rodizio)
Sunday 21st January - Day 474
Avenue Paulista
Instituto Itaú Cultural
Casa das Rosas
Trianon Park
Monday 22nd January 2024 - Day 475
São Paulo walking tour
Coffee at Cafe Latte
Tuesday 23rd January - Day 476 / Wednesday 24th January - Day 477
Flight home via Lisbon
Summary
São Paulo
The head on a swivel awareness was in full force while in São Paulo. Plenty of the horror stories we had been told about Brazil centred around São Paulo and as such we were super careful about safety; predominantly pay extra for safe transport and in a safe area of the city.
Where we went it wasn’t actually all that bad and the walk around the ‘safe’ parts of the city was entertaining enough.
Transport
São Paulo
Walk to Paraty bus terminal
Reunidas bus to São Paulo (booked ahead on Busbud)
Taxi from the bus terminal to Airbnb. A bit expensive at R$70 but Uber seemed to be a pain.
Accommodation
São Paulo - Airbnb, R. Augusta, 2099 - Jardim Paulista
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £20
Positives:
Comfortable apartment
Decent aircon
Safe and central enough location
Negatives:
Not really any
Recommend?
Yes
Diary
Saturday 20th January - Day 473
After having a decent breakfast and pocketing a load of ham cheese toasties for our lunch, we were out of the accommodation, across the road to the bus terminal and on our way to São Paulo.
The first leg was super slow going. A massive traffic jam along a beach town meant we crawled to the bus stop where we had a lunch stop for a good hour more. Love a ‘roadside’ coxinha.
It was a good 3 more hours to São Paulo and once we arrived we were so happy to be done with the long bus rides around the world. 7 hours in total felt like nothing to us these days, and is the same time it takes us to get deep into Scotland. I’m sure we’ll revert back to our travel weakness pretty quickly.
With our numerous preformed judgments about São Paulo, we didn’t want to risk trying to find the cheaper taxi alternative to the taxi rank within the bus terminal. Uber would have required us to have wandered outside for the pick up point and so we got into an agreement with a taxi guy. 60 fun coupons magically became 70 while driving but the additional £1.50 did little to piss us off and minus a scoff of ‘typical’ we ignored it.
At our Airbnb we had the pleasure of one last final taxi faff of trying to pay for the fucker. He had no change for cash, we didn’t speak Portuguese and eventually we arrived at paying using a card. GOODBYE TAXI DRIVERS, YOU ARE LITERALLY THE MOST INCOMPETENT PEOPLE WE HAVE HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF DEALING WITH.
The airbnb Nicola had chosen was great. A nice gated apartment block, with a large studio apartment that was very comfortable. The main draw was it was in a decent neighbourhood and we felt very safe walking to and from it.
What we hadn’t sampled yet in Brazil was the iconic all you can eat Brazilian rodizio. Fortunately for us, an incredibly well rated restaurant was downstairs and we had probably the second most expensive meal of our trip at Fogo de Chão Jardins.
The Brazilian rodizio is frequently associated with a style of service where a server distributes meat “In-The-Round” at a Brazilian buffet called a Churrascaria. In a rodizio Service, a team of servers bring meat and other grilled foods on a skewer to your table and slice it fresh from the grill. Luke had been to one such place in the UK and it was well and truly awful.
This one however absolutely slapped. The meat itself wasn’t anything to run home and rave about (the Argentinian steaks were infinitely better) but it was good quality and the different cuts and variety of meat was very good.
Hilariously what Nicola raved most about was the outstanding ‘salad’ cart in the middle. It had absolutely everything we could have wanted that we missed from back home, was great quality and so refreshing. Luke agreed, it was great, and if we could have paid a cheaper fee for an all you can eat salad cart we would 100% of done it.
To round off Luke’s joyful experience he had a lovely smooth glass of Portuguese red to help his 4 full plates go down. The food coma was real and had him bursting at the seams for a day. So worth it.
Sunday 21st January - Day 474
Luke spent the morning trying to recover from overeating. It was a mighty challenge.
Our São Paulo eating wasn’t balanced at all, and continued prior nights indulgence with a Mcers brunch, simply because it was close.
Our day was spent along Avenue Paulista which was conveniently closed. It appeared this was a standard Sunday thing but it made for a great chill day along the 6 lane closed main road.
What wasn’t so great was how closed everything was. We weren’t out early by any means but it seemed plenty of shops didn’t open until the afternoon, if at all on a Sunday. Our first stint at a shopping mall to find body shop products meant we would have a round 2 later in the afternoon.
The closed street was great, minus the odd occasional downpour. It was usually short lived and as we had coats we didn’t feel the need to hide away like others.
The closed street stretched on for a while and probably the best thing we saw was a mcds throwing a dance rave outside courtesy of a well placed DJ on the balcony.
Throughout the street there were similar dance parties and various street vendors and performers while cyclists had free reign in the middle of the road. It was a pretty wholesome experience.
Our location finale on the road was the Japan Centre but the queue around the street made us say na and turned away.
The Instituto Itaú Cultural offered us some short lived entertainment but it was predominantly in Portuguese and we don’t like art all that much. But it was free.
Next door was a place called Casa das Rosas which had a nice front garden we walked around in. Definitely catered to the plenty of kids running around.
We went to a building that apparently had a decent rooftop place to oversee the city but it required downloading an app that didn’t work on our UK phones. So once again, this attempt was short lived.
On our way back to the apartment we went through Trianon Park and in a moment of sit down leisure, got our last last mozzie bites of the trip for us both. Good. Fucking. Riddance.
It almost seemed that the street got more hip happening as the day went on, despite it getting greyer and wetter. But this clearly doesn’t dampen the Brazilian weekend spirit.
Now later in the day we managed to get our Body shop shop in and we’re thrilled to find all the products Nicola used were in stock, not discontinued and over half the price it would be in the UK. A very strange array of discounts worked in our favour.
Back at the apartment we chilled and had a very uninspiring instant ramen dinner. To jazz this up we had some afters from the nearby Nanica Augusta store and after again having our R$100 being rejected for a lack of change and the same happening in Carrefour, ended up having to run back to the apartment to grab a card. But for £3 the phat slices of banoffee / fruit tart hit the spot.
Monday 22nd January 2024 - Day 475
Despite feeling like a relatively safe area, the apartment views were not very nice.
To see São Paulo in a relatively calm manner we jumped on the last of our walking tours. The metro was easy enough but required R$5 fixed fare in exact cash only.
Italian building - seemed to be a lot of these
Copan - some crazy large complex akin to a hotel in vegas.
Paróquia Nossa Senhora da Consolação
Mário de Andrade Library
Municipal Theatre of São Paulo
Shopping Light
Praça Ramos de Azevedo
Viaduto do Chá
Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo
Padaria mais antiga de SP - offered a nice place to have a Coxinha break and a sit down. The card entry and payment with said card system seems quite popular and clearly a means to stop people dining and dashing so easily.
Catedral da Sé de São Paulo
Monumento Glória Imortal São Paulo
College Pateo - something about being Jesuit
Mosteiro de São Bento
Very happy we got a walking tour, but it did go on for a very long time.
To recover we had a quick coffee at Cafe Latte where Nicola accidentally ordered a cold orange coffee. To be fair to her, a brew in the UK doesn’t usually mean coffee. Here we purchased some Minas Gerais coffee for our lovely friend Tommy that had been looking after far too much of our stuff at his crib. Apologies mate, it was a cheap present despite being o so tasty.
To kick our legs back into life we got off the metro early and walked back along avenue Paulista at a decent pace.
We had planned to go to a nicer restaurant for dinner but rocked up too early and in trying to find a new one, gave up and went easy with the mcds. Defo need a hiatus from McDonald’s.
Tuesday 23rd January - Day 476 / Wednesday 24th January - Day 477
The final check out of the trip was completed by 10am and we’re in an Uber to the international airport. It was a fair ol way and took nearly an hour.
We had plenty of time to kill, opting for the more comfy tables of the TGIs. The ‘well done’ burger arrived less than cooked and a forgotten drinks order topped off our time in Brazil.
Through security we topped up our bellies with a subway and boarded the flight to Lisbon.
The day time flight wasn’t too taxing. At Lisbon airport we didn’t have access to the main terminal so had to settle for nothing being open and it being very uncomfortable. An attempt to lie down on both our parts failed dramatically and to top off the discomfort, we were sandwiched in the middle of the middle.
At around 1pm on Wednesday 24th January we were back on English soil at Heathrow and the big trip was done and dusted.
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