Act I : SuburbiaWhen I got to Paulo's apartment, I immediately noticed the view : he lives on the 25th floor and has a great balcony overlooking the whole area. I was impressed, it was night time, quite late (around 11pm), all those lights, still much traffic, a vibrant city. With all those skyscrapers around, I really felt I was in the heart of it.- Wow Paulo, what an impressive view of Sao Paulo ! This city is huge !!- Hahaha ! Nadege ! What you see here is...

Right next to Paulo's place, there's a HUGE CARREFOUR ! I feel I'm in France (Carrefour is a group of large supermarkets in France). So I just thought I'd check it out and see whether I could buy some stuff to cook Paulo and Carol some nice meals :)Well I was in for a surprise. I haven't been to a large supermarket in Brazil before (or I don't recall) so this was brand new for me. What I didn't know then is that this supermarket's ...

When the plane lands in Detroit (where there's a snowstorm), the stewardess kindly asks all of us out. "Welcome to Detroit, blah blah, for connecting flights, blah blah, thank you for flying with us, blah blah". No word whatsoever about Sao Paulo, which is really great for a flight that was indicated as going to Sao Paulo.So I get out, not without asking the lady what the hell's going on here ! She stays cool and says, very matter of factly : oh, it must ...

No, I mean seriously.We arrive in Sao Paulo at around 8:00 pm something (i.e. 12 hours after the original ETA). The immigration takes a couple of minutes. It's amazing how efficient it is. I am impressed : maybe 10 or 15 lines are open (Brazilian nationals, foreigners).The airport looks terrible on the other hand. It feels like I landed in Angola years ago. Just a bit less dirty and disorganized :) We reach the luggage delivery area and, after what seemed to...

Uneventful flight, really. I just fell asleep right after we took off.I woke up just minutes before we landed.That enabled me to take some pictures proving this was definitely not San Diego... nor Brazil for that matter.I got off the plane and headed right out of the airport for a smoke. And two. And three. Then back inside, security, lunch (last burger !), coffee, and off I am on my next flight.This next flight is clearly indicated everywhere (screens, gate) as...