Sao Paulo
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2004
1
84
133
Trip End
Nov 01, 2005
Sao Paulo,
Brazil
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
We caught a 7am bus to Sao Paulo. The bus took 6 hours to get there but at times we thought weīd never make it. We have never seen a bus driver quike like this - cutting people up, swerving through 3 lanes, trying to overtake when it wasnīt allowed, doing 120kmph in a 60 zone. The definite attraction of a night bus is that you donīt see what they are doing. We arrived and caught a taxi to the hostel and the female driver actually seemed to get lost in the area of the hostel. We spent the afternoon getting organised for leaving the country...laundry, postage, etc - itīs not all fun you know - but it isnīt that much in the way of hassle that would want to stop us travelling!! We had to get some boot laces and after a couple of unsuccessful shops we went into a outdoors shop - though the guy did not have any spare laces he stripped them from a pair of boots for sale and gave them to us for free as a welcome to Brazil present
01 Sao Paulo City Centre
.Day 221 Wednesday 08/06/05 Sao Paulo
We took a walking tour of Sao Paulo and we have to say that it is a much much nicer city centre than we thought it would be. In the last 10 years or so the city has been trying to reclaim the city centre and clean it up from the drugs and filth that marred it once the main businesses moved to a new district. We still can't get over the fact that this city has over 4 times the population of Ireland! The guide turned up late and we started by taking a ride on the Metro system - very like any other Metro. We popped up in one of the hearts of the Old Centre - Saint Sebastian Square. The city was founded by two priests who converted a friendly old Indian Chief - this church & square were basically built on the house of the chief once he died - and at his request. He also dictated that the city should be triangular in shape with a church on each corner and a cathedral in the centre - in which he was buried. Apart from lots of churches (and active monastries) the centre has some wonderful old buildings and old-styled modern buildings. The first sky scraper in the city was the Martinelli building and it is fabulous (http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=119765) and looked very North American to us. It is now dwarfed by lots and lots of other high buildings - the tallest of which we went to the top of - around 35 floors
02 One Of The First Skyscrapers
. From the top we began to get a feel for the size of the city but it was sadly a little misty - not that we could have seen the 50km or so to the edge of the city! The amount of high rises is just stunning. In addition to going into many of the churches we visited the Cathedral - the interior of the Cathedral is well...huge. At the time they designed and built it to be the highest building in Sao Paulo! They are actually still working on it now - some 60 years after it started. One of the oddest things in the Cathedral is the cross - green with gold trim - the Brazilian colours! Near the end of the tour the city within a city was pointed out to us - an amazing building that houses some 1160 residences from small pokey flats to superb apartments..it also has shops, cinemas etc - people only have to leave for work. After that we basically chilled and hit the hay for our early start the next day - and we missed Argentina beating Brazil 3-1 at football - but it kicked off about 10pm.....so that people could get home, eat and then watch the footy...how civilised. 
