Sao Paulo, Brazil, South America

I had a pretty good day in the city today, even though this city isn’t much to look at. I left the hostel and walked about 25 minutes down to Parque Republica for a free walking tour. This walk was the most uncomfortable I have been for a while, because I had my camera with me, and it was not a nice neighborhood I was walking through to get there. I made it there safely though, and found the walking tour about 15 minutes before it was going to start. I also met up with Graeme and Hillary for the tour, so that was nice.

We went on the free walking tour, along with about 40 other people, and it was pretty awful. The truth is that Sao Paulo really is just a big ugly city, but with a lot of people and it’s a financial hub. There’s not a lot to marvel at as a tourist, and the tour kind of reflected that. The tour was meant to be about 3.5 hours long, but there was a 20 minute break after two hours and the three of us decided to duck out. This was also just after we had checked out the main cathedral in the center, and three of the people on our tour, including Hillary, got spit on by a homeless guy. He was sitting on the stairs of the cathedral, and people weren’t giving him money, so he decided to spit on them. Absolutely disgusting. But after this happened, it made it even easier to walk away from the tour.

We went to a place nearby called Salve Jorge, which Andrea had recommended that we go to for lunch. They have the traditional Brazilian meal of feijoada, and she said that this restaurant has one of the best in the city, so we tried it out. It was a lot of food, and it was okay, but again, it wasn’t mind blowing. It was a piece of pork, rice, beans, salad, a fried banana, and a shot of caipirinha. Graeme and Hillary weren’t starving, so they split one, and I had my own, but it was way too much food for me.

The three of us got the subway up to Paulista Avenue from the center and then had a look at the bar O’Malley’s. Esther had said that they do one of the biggest Super Bowl parties in the city, so we wanted to see if it would be worth it for tomorrow night. We found out that there is a cover charge to get in, and you can’t reserve a table, so we think we might just go to Hooters instead. We’re going to talk about it tomorrow and see what Esther and Andrea recommend, but that’s probably what we’ll do.

I split off from Graeme and Hillary after that and came back to the hotel to chill for a bit. I wanted to see if the SP pizza was really as good as I’d read about, so I went to a pizzeria down the street that was recommended by the people at my hotel. I got a pepperoni pizza, and while it was loaded with pepperoni, it wasn’t really all that different from pizza’s I’d had before. It was good, but not the best pizza I’ve ever had. I’m starting to think the pizza here has been overhyped. I’m not too bothered though because I’m going to bed now and when I wake up tomorrow it’s going to be my favorite holiday of the year, Super Bowl Sunday!!!