vickygoestravelling

my journey to health and well being via exotic destinations

São Paulo in half a day

Leave a comment

74A646B1-77B1-4D03-A8BC-47F006961120

The Banderas monument made from Italian marble to commemorate the early explorers. Took 30 years to complete.

We arrive early in the morning to azure skies, winter sun and a distinct chill in the air. It takes us a good hour and a half to struggle through the snaking  immigration queue so it is a relief to find our driver who whisks us off the the Tivoli Mofarrej in the peaceful Jardins area of SP.

6B5A34B3-CA6B-4127-8C39-8774D48EAD83

Herself in the market

It is still early so we decide to take a whistle-stop tour with a guide and see the city.  Enrico scoops us up and first we drive through the four Jardins  areas from our quarter, which has  upmarket  shopping and restaurants, to Americas with its huge mansions, Europe and Paulina. Each has streets named after the areas.  I find it hard to believe we are in ‘dangerous’ Brazil, it’s so leafy and quiet, even the traffic is unexpectedly tame: it’s the winter school holidays.DD0BB7B5-D2B1-4830-AE5F-9CF860518971

In three hours  there’s not much time to stop so we whizz into SP’s oldest church, Our Lady Of Brazil, with its mock Sistine chapel and Portuguese blue tiles

glance at the boat-shaped Unique hotel8E334F10-C8D1-4378-8595-08D79276C5E4  and pass through the Ibirapuera park with its Biennale and museum buildings all designed by Niemeyer.

269790C4-5D54-42B6-8675-69D13DD42155

The Niemeyer auditorium in the park;  check the scale by looking at the roof cleaners!

From there we drive through downtown with its churches and squares, the stupendous skyscrapers sprouting out through the old colonial buildings, many of which were destroyed as being too ‘backward’ for Brazil’s politicians.

Talking of which the governor of SP Juan Doria was on our flight, a dapper dark haired man all dressed in black. He has been in London to discuss how to de-pollute the rivers that run though SP – one of his election pledges. He has the Finance Minister in tow.  The other passengers are queuing  up for selfies and shaking his hand. An ally of Bolsonara, according to Enrique he has presidential aspirations in 2022 but he and the big man have fallen our over the moving  of the F1 to Rio, home of the President.

7E3EEDE4-8705-4861-B423-618521EC4F8C

One of the magnificent stained glass windows in the central market  depicting agricultural life in Brazil, here ranching  

We love the old municipal market with its towering fruit displays and row upon row of bacalao or salt cod. The Italians were very early settlers in Brazil and SP radiates their influences from the ironwork on sculptures, church architecture and the olives and salamis that festoon the market.

There was a big Japanese influx here too (400,000 of them) and SP’s Liberdade is full of sushi restaurants and shops with Hello Kitty junk and rice cookers.

Tour over we walk across the busy Avenida Paulista, the financial centre of SP to the São Paulo Art Gallery MASP. Here we are enthralled by a skilfully curated exhibition of their own staggering collection ranging from grandmasters – Rafael, Rubens, Delacroix, Hals, Rembrandt, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Gainsborough, Mogdiliani etc etc

combined with modern Brazilian artists

To end with  a wonderful exhibition of one of Brazil’s foremost female artists  who studied under Leger and Lhote, Tarsila do Amaral. Loved the influences and her landscapes, her people but not so much her cubist stuff.  A great way to end the afternoon.

In the evening we wander round the corner a couple of blocks – yes dear reader in SP at night on foot – to  a Brazilian restaurant for caipirinhas, ceviche and mucecha though Ross has a big steak. And then home to bed!

Exhausted but feel we have had a good taste of this city of 12.2 m in the world’s fifith largest country. Distressed by the huge numbers of homeless sleeping under uniform grey blankets and begging but uplifted by the vivid murals that cover almost  every inch of spare space.   Now off to the wetlands of the Pantanal!

E069DFE9-EFA2-4195-8CF4-2707C2983E2B

PS first attempt of blog on the iphone so pl excuse any typos or weird gaps. It’s a bit tricky!

Author: vickyunwin

I am a writer and traveller. Our darling daughter Louise died on 2 March 2011, aged 21 (www.louisecattell.com) and I started writing as therapy. We never know how long we have on this earth, so I live for every day...in November 2013 I was diagnosed and operated on for a malignant soft tissue sarcoma in the calf, followed by 6.5 weeks of radiotherapy, so am embarking on a different kind of journey which you can follow here. I also have another site www.healthylivingwithcancer.co with my blueprint for health and well-being.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s