Sao Paulo

After Carnaval I had a couple more days in Rio to relax and recover as well as visit the large Christ statue on the top of the mountain. I then headed to Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brasil.

I stayed with a friend of a friend Gustavo, an artsy hipster Peruvian living and working in SP. He and his friends spend their time filming and painting and wearing trending cloths and other artsy hipster things I don’t know about; but it was a interesting peak into what that lifestyle looks like.

If Rio is southern California, then Sampa in New York; where people work really hard all day and go out to trendy Expensive restaurants, bars, and clubs all night. The weirder the decorations on the walls (ie. Pot lids, ribbon designs, naked people) and the more expensive a place is the cooler. At least this is the side of the city I saw.

So that’s what we did. During the day when people were working I went to the Museum of Futebol, which was really well done (and artsy) and explored the city center. I must say I did not love Sao Paulo. It is big and hard to navigate to the point were if you ask directions not even the locals have a clue which way is up. I also felt less safe there where Rio I always felt very comfortable. At night I would go out with Gustavo and his friends and act as trendy as I know how…

One funny thing about these adventures is that Gustavo never really bothered to learn Portuguese. He gets by comfortably with his Spanish, throwing in Portuguese words here and there. While this made it harder for me to progress with my language skills, I still had his friends, who echoed the joke that I spoke better Portuguese after one week in brasil than he does after 2 years!