Greetings all!

A brief blog about our time in São Paulo.

We both agreed we wanted to spend one night here, even though we had the option to pass straight through it, because at 20million people we thought it would be an experience.

We arrived into a ginormous bus station in the afternoon on Monday after which we navigated the tube network and found our hotel which was located very centrally so turned out to be a good find. Also was substantially better than the hostel situation we had left behind :-)!

The city was busy and the walk to the hotel passed along some of the central streets which were covered in graffiti (seems to be a standard across Brazil), there were lots of homeless people sleeping on the floor and all in all it was a bit grotty.

We ventured of for a walk to Polista Avenue while it was still light which is the main 'high street' of the city. It was further away than we had thought and it got dark on the way there. As we were walking along a horribly busy highway type road which was long and a bit quiet I started to get paranoid and think we were surrounded by a gang at different points on the street trying to rob us ... of course we weren't I was just totally paranoid! I did however make Esben put his hood up on his hoody, 1) because then they couldn't see his hair colour and as people think I am Brazilian we were less of a target and 2) because I believe it makes him look more likely to retaliate if approached :-)!!

We had a quick wander on the avenue then headed back to the hotel by tube and got an early night.

On the Tuesday we were getting the night bus to Foz dos Iguazu at 6pm so we took the chance to have a further explore of the city. We went to see the city theatre, wandered up to a large indoor food market and had a fresh juice and then headed back to Avenue Polista for another look around. It was a bit disappointing to be honest, a lot of high rise offices, banks and grotty little shops. There was a significant lack of decent clothes shops much to my dismay and Esben's delight. We had a disappointing Mexican wrap for lunch before slowly making our way back to the hotel to pick up our bags and head back to the bus station.

We were both glad we went to explore the city and saw the high rise, buzzing streets but it is far from our favourite city and I wouldn't return for a holiday.

Esben is telling me this sounds too negative so I will add that despite the fact we weren't in the nicest place we really enjoyed ourselves!!

I will blog again soon about the Iguazu Falls!

Alice
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