Afternoon on the Avenida Paulista

Hi everyone! I appologize for my lateness in getting my blogs published (as usual), but I think traveling non-stop is a decent enough excuse. Don´t worry, I´ve been jotting down everything though, so I promise that I´ll be cranking out a bunch of new posts about my travels.

As a brief summary/update: (see map below for context)

After leaving the Rio de Janeiro area, I headed to São Paulo for two days, followed by one day in Curitiba (further south) and one week in Florianópolis (still further south). Then I flew up to Salvador for several days and traveled to a small town called Lençois to visit the Chapada Diamantina National Park. After three weeks of rather fast-paced traveling, I came back to Rio de Janeiro on June 26th to begin my program. It´s been a great week and a half here in Rio so far, and I´ll give lots more details soon, but at least now you know what I´ve been up to.

My Pre-Program Travels

So, now to begin where I left off...

Day 3: São Paulo
June 10, 2010

So, after an overnight bus ride from Niterói, we arrived bright and early to São Paulo, the fourth largest city in the world. I've been in massive cities before, but there was something about seeing the concrete jungle of skyscrapers sprawling out in every direction that really set São Paulo apart for me. In search for a hostel, we hit morning rush hour on the metrô (subway system) and got crammed in between the paulistas (people from São Paulo), which was a perfect time to just people watch. One thing that I noticed is that the paulistas are a bit more reserved than the cariocas (people from Rio de Janeiro). Of course, I probably would be less laidback if I had to navigate the traffic there every day instead of chilling on a nice warm beach in Rio. Nevertheless, every paulista still displayed the warm Brazilian spirit that I love, always willing to chat and help when I stopped to ask for directions.

Once we were liberated from our bags at the hostel, we were off to the futebol (soccer) museum, which was perfect considering a Copa (the World Cup) was starting the next day. It was really cool to learn so much, not only about the history of futebol in Brazil (which is obviously important to know in such a futebol-crazed country), but also a bunch of new futebol terms in Portuguese. For example, frango (literally: chicken) is when an easy shot slips out of the goalie´s hands and into the goal...which I actually saw a couple days later in a game. Another term is a zebra (zebra in English too), for when a low-ranked team with no chances of winning beats a really good team, which also happened. All in all, pretty educational! And the museum itself - actually inside a stadium, as you can see from the photo below - was really interactive and high-tech.

Luis and I then walked all along the Avenida Paulista, which is the main avenue there. It´s a massive street with tons of people and cars and commerce. I don´t know if you can make it out in the photo below, but the main avenue is where I took the picture from, and then there is another whole street below! This wasn´t taken at rush hour, but I´m sure you can imagine how crazy traffic gets there. São Paulo actually has implemented a rodízio in some zones of the city, where you can only drive your car on certain days. It´s determined by your license plate so, for example, even-numbered plates can travel M W F but not T R, etc.

We stopped to grab lunch inside a shopping (mall) along the Avenida Paulista before visiting MASP, or Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo Art Museum). It´s really famous for it´s amazing collection - Monet, Rembrant, Segall, Picasso, Degas, Rodin, El Greco, Van Gogh, etc. The design of the building itself is really cool...as you can see below, the museum is raised off the ground by the red columns on the sides.


Right across the street from MASP was the Parque Trianon, so we popped over there as our last excursion for the day. It was the most insane thing - five steps into the park and somehow all the hustle and bustle and noise of the Avenida Paulista magically melted away. Even the tall trees blocked out the reality of the endless skyscrapers - I couldn´t spot a single neighboring building. This tranquil oasis and the calm of dusk was a shocking contrast to the back-to-back traffic just outside the park´s gates. But, we eventually made our way back out for a relaxing night at the hostel to prepare for our second day in São Paulo!


Until the next update! Coli