São Paulo, Where People Meet People

I couldn´t be so close to São Paulo and not visit it! So on one of the days from Campinas I headed there with Bruno and Flávio. Expert tour guides at my service!

01 Cathedral With Square Full Of Dodgy People

We got the bus down which should take just a little over an hour. However due to some road works and traffic jam it took far longer. It is afterall one of the most populous cities in the world, with 10 million people in the city, or 18 million if you´re talking about metropolitan area.

My bad run of luck with footware continued here. My right sandle broke not long after we got off the bus, leaving it completely unwearable. I then had to hobble through the underground with one shoe. Into the center of town with one shoe. Then over the central square with one shoe, and finally into a shoe shop. I´ve now got a nice new pair of cheap flip-flops. Does anyone want to lay any bets on how long they´ll last? 2 week, evens. 5 weeks 2-1. More than 3 months 50-1.

02 (Way Too) Modern Art Gallery

We had a good look around town. Through some of the main shopping streets. To the first town hall where the town started, where they also server a decent lunch. Flávio took us to a bank where they always have different exhibitions on. They had a number of Chinese instruments on display, not what you´d usually find in the Halifax.

We also visited the main cathedral in town. It was huge, really impressive. The interior was like a tardis, it looked big from the outside but inside was just bigger. Outside the cathedral though were a number of rather dodgy looking characters. If it wasn´t for the fact that I had a couple of bodyguards with me I don´t think I´d have taken my camera out. After this we headed into the underground.

As I was going down the escalators I saw someone ahead of me that looked familiar. Nahh, it´s a city of 10-18 million people. It took a couple of minutes but then I placed her. I´d met her in Rio the previous week. I told Flávio that I recognised someone and then went over to talk to her as we waited for the train. What´s the chances of that happening? Flávio later said that he NEVER bumps into anyone he knows in São Paulo, it´s just too big. Well, I was there for a few hours and managed it. wow.

After this we headed for a modern art gallery, and we certainally got some modern art, we couldn´t work out what half the stuff was! Afterwards we were sitting outside having a well earned coffee. A guy was there drawing portraits of other customers, it wasn´t long before it was our turn! First up was Bruno, trying to act naturally. After a few minutes he´d finished. It really wasn´t very good, next up was myself and Flávio. They were terrible, in fact, all the portraits just looked exactly the same. They were in a caracature style and he´d decided that I had a big nose. I can tell anyone that doesn´t know what I look like that I have anything but a big nose. He was crap.