São Paulo II (dia dois)

21 nov 2009

We had a lovely breakfast at the hostel,

I felt like compared to the other hostels it was a well rounded breakfast (well the Pousada Natureza takes the cake but...) they had lots of fruit, protein in the ham and other deli meats, granola, good swiss cheese. They also had some fresh juice like pineapple, (no soy milk but :( well what do you expect?) baguettes, butter, honey, cookies, banana with ground cinnamon

coffee, tea,

some nice cake. Look at this, i was pretty satisfied. I made myself a little sandwich with ham and cheese and honey drizzled on top. I had some of that banana and guava, and half the papaya, mango, pineapple juice. mmmm..


Today we had planned to go to a the top of the Banespa building to see the panorama of São Paulo, then a really awesome Mercado near by, then walk to Liberdade for lunch and go to a the museum of the Portuguese language.

This is what our little neighborhood in Sampa looks like as we're leaving our dear hostel:

There are orchids growing out of the trees!
I was surprised at how flowery this big city smells, every like 3 minutes I smell some jasmines or roses.

We got to where the Banespa is supposed to be we took the metro this time. We unfortunately found out they don't have ANY deals on the metro passes, like a week pass or anything you have to buy them all at the same price.
We walked all around this place only to find out that the tower is closed all saturdays, so it was sad. We didn't get to see that 360 degree view of the city :( But oh well.
I had a sudden urge to go to the bathroom and all around us were just these tall executive buildings. So I just went up to a random one and asked if I could use the bathroom, and amazingly they just let me in.
It was some lawyer building, and I don't know I feel like in Sacramento if I ask at some lawyers building I wouldn't get the same response.
So here's the bathroom: I know I'm ridiculous but I just really felt like I had to capture these heart-shaped toilet seat covers that I had also seen at Boi Preto Churrascaria restaurant but it was still too early for me to start taking pictures of such trivial things. But I am relatively uninhibited now! muahahahahah
Anyway then we were looking for the Mercado Municipal, but got lost and bumped into this graffiti exhibit and I am really happy about that.





I got to see this artwork by my favorite graffiti artists--they're twins and that's their street name "Os Gêmeos" which also can mean Gemini. This IS they're hometown and I'm planning on seeing this other installation they have in the city at a museum right now.
We kept walking supposedly towards the Mercado and we came up to this crowd:
And I guessed it we were in Rua 25 de Março, which is always this crowded. It's lined with cheap stores and stands where you can find all sorts of things! Anything!
We saw this flan looking thing, pudim de leite, pretty much flan.
But we couldn't find the mercado and we kept getting inconsistent information, just go down the rua and it will be at the end, then we got to that end and they'd say oh just go that way all the way down the street, so we went down that busy crowded street like 4 times!!!! oh meu deus it was torture. And well we ended up somewhere else that they happened to have food too. So we just decided to give up there. (And i bet we were really close too)
Above is a lovely selection of (from left) jiló, maxixe, and quiabo




What those gentlment are cutting are huge Jaca fruit and they offered us a sample
It comes from Asia originally as I've mentioned in another blog in Jardim Botânico , and it's like gummy and sweet and chewy but really sticky.

so the mercado was okay but this is what i was expecting:
The mercado even has a website check it out.
so there's just one other reason to come back to SP some day. I love farmer's markets!
Then we walked to the Museu da Língua Portugeusa and it was amazing!


They talked about the history of languages and how Brazilian Portuguese evolved into what it is now. You can look at this branch of langauges of some of the biggest linguistic families. Oh my gosh I was geeking out at this museum because I am facinated by language in general. And it was amazing to just see the history of the language I use every day here.


Also a time-line of all the influences
The latin roots, their meaning and what word it is in Brazilian portuguese now
Some Arabic words that are in Portuguese (and many in English too)
Then the African Bantu words that came in because of African slavery in Brasil.
I had a really great time, of course but the thing is you need to know Portuguese to really appreciate this museum there's no translation so the more portuguese you know the better.
It was a very technologically advanced musuem too.
They had this electronic map you could click on to hear the different sotaques (accents) in Brazil. It was really cool.

There was also a table that showed images of preffixes and suffixes and roots of words and people could use their hands to combine them, and once parts of words came together and made sense a cool like video wikipedia came up. look:

Then we went to take the metro again down to Liberdade because our feet were so tired of walking around and standing.

Hey does any Bart station have piano in it? i thought this was a really cool station, this metro subway station was built in an ex train station.

We got to Liberdade, the Japanese town.
And we got there on a day that they have their street fair so that was cool. We timed somethign appropriately yes! They had Brazilian Japanese food .
We went to a Japanese market. There are a lot of Korean and Chinese pockets here too though, so Lena said she felt she was in China.
Lena said that she felt less homesick just seeing asian food and stuff but it actually had the opposite effect on me. I suddenly missed my trips to San Jose's japan town and all the happy memories I've had related to Japan *ehem*

I'm in Japan!
And look what I found! Another Os gemoes work!

I always think that there is something strategic about works so my friend and I were trying to analyze it and we came up with the idea that may be the purpose of it being in the Liberdade district may symbolize immigration in which you bring your physical house, by reinstilling your cultural architecture and literally bringing your "house" and keeping your food and your own little bubble of culture to a new place. That's what that made us think of but who knows.

What we did know was that we were starving. I bought a little sandwich back at 25 de marco but it was little, and I brought a granola bar and nibbled on it as the day progressed but that was totally not lunch. And now it was 4PM no lunch thus far but the restaurants weren't open for dinner yet and I really wanted to go to know i'd seen online but I forgot what it was called and where it was so...we just asked around I think it was like Nasako or something like that. But at this point we were just hungry and went into a little market that had a little table in the back where you could eat their homemade prepackaged food. we got some inari it was dericious! I don't know what that red powder was I've never seen that in Japanese food before but whatev.
And then it started to rain again, and it was pouring and pouring forever. We sat on the steps at some restaurant that would be opening sson andthey had a sign that there was a special in the lunchboxes of sushi and stuff and it was pretty cheap so we waited. until finally it opened and we were the first ones there. We got the menu and all the little dishes were like 30 dollars and not filling. So Lena was like "I can't afford this" and plus we were starving and we would not be satisfeitas if bought what we could afford. So I'm like, what should we do? They had already given us warm wet towels and everything but Lena's like "I don't care I'll tell them"
So I let her and in her broken Portenglish she told the waitor "Um this place is caro de mais for us, entao, we have leave, sorry" And I'm like, oh no, may be I should have said it but the waitor was totally chill about it and polite even though we had to go, she's like "don't worry about it"
So it was great.

So we kept walking down that same street and I kept seeing "lamen" signs all over the place. Lamen this Lamen that, what's up with that? I was really curious, but then finally my Engrish kicked in, and I'm like. ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh: RAMEN!
But next to the Ramen place there was this Buffet!:

And it was pretty much the same price as the other place or less actually it was like 15 dollars for all you can eat. It was a mixed buffet of Chinese, Japanese food and Korean BBQ.
It was my first korean barbecue ever and it was exciting.


Lena was really the one who know how to use this thing, but they had a selection of seasoned raw meet over at the buffet thingy and you pick what you want and cook it youself.
I got a whole bunch of sushi, I love SALMON! I was super excited. they also had octopus and oyster and all these little japanese pickled stuff.
I thought it was a really nice place and it filled pretty well. Lena felt like she was in China especially here. She kept hearing Cantonese.

Oh man, woman, and child, I ate sooo much. I was almost going to explode but I decided not to. Because the food was really really delicious. And the service was good. I would definitely go back to this place, I forgot what it's called but you just go down that main street at liberdade past that os gemeos work, and go straight.
Another great but tiring day! And yep we walked back to our hostel from there! Oh I need a shower. my hair and my dress (Katherine's/the community dress) smell like BBQ.
boa noite!

Sao Paulo I (dia um)

20 nov. 2009
Sampa here we come!
I have done sooo much last-minute research and preparations so that we can really take advantage of the 4 days we'll be in Sampa. This was my main reference I found this Blog about São Paulo especially helpful about restaurants and ways of getting around, from someone who lives there:
http://www.blogdesaopaulo.com/

I felt like I was already there just waiting in the airport because there were all these people dressed much differently than people in Salvador. In fancy suits, and eccentric designer clothes, some Japanese-looking people (! the first I had seen apart from my peers) and an older woman wearing these awesome metallic purple shoes! they looked great!

Anyway Lena and I weren't sure how to get around but the people at the airport said the cheapest way was to take this airport express bus (we were skeptical about this because we saw some other city buses, but we wouldn't know how to take them or what our stop was supposed to look like so, what are we gonna do?) Lena had all the information about how to find our hostel. We decided to stay at Pousada dos Franceses which was rather cheap compared to some other and seemed to get good reviews. (But totally a last-minute choice....for our last-minute trip). So I just sat back and trusted Lena. We were supposed to get off in front of some tall colorful building named Maksoud this place right here:
We got a little lost once we were dropped off but we finally found our cute little Pousada dos Franceses.




It was R$39 each person per day in a "collective room". It was an all-female 8 person room and Lena and I shared a bunk bed.



The banheiro for our room:
Yeah we were a little surprised to see the there were clear glass door in a bathroom for several people, Lena and I just put up a towel and it was all good though. 2 showers and 3 bathrooms for 8 girls. But there were some others downstairs for everyone.
We each got a locker with a lock and key too.
Then we put our stuff down and were off!
We were at first not really sure where to go or what but we got these maps from the hostel and figured out how to get to Avenida Paulista. Which you must visit, it's like the heart of São Paulo.
Since we were there, we decided to check out the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) .
It embodies the innovative architecture that has been a part of São Paulo's history. The museum is a huge block of cement suspended by bright red pillars and a glass elevator on the side. That goes up and above ground and down underground, there is nothing ground level!
They had an eclectic mix of exhibitions. From Rodin (a french sculpture of the late 1800s early 19oos) to local street artists. We almost didn't make it to the graffiti part which was really cool. I especially loved this kind of Japanese-inspired artwork that was up all over the wall, of a woman in a kimono getting into a Japanese bath tub but super colorful and swirly spilling all over the floor too.
But the we got out and it was pouring!!! We tried to wait it out but after 15/20 minutes we decided that it wasn't going to stop soon and so I bought this cheap poncho and a R$10 umbrella.


Then from there we walked to Rua Oscar Freire, one of the most luxurious streets in the world, and second in the Americas right after 5th Avenue in New York.
They have all these chic shops and high fashion designer places. Even for BABIES!
But this was all window-shopping necessarily by choice though: all the stores were closed by that time already.
But it was still fun to look into the stores and the streets were lined with Christmas decorations.
check this out they even have fish ponds under their displays.
The only place that was open and not even that noticeable was this "Mercado Chic" that was a collection of different little tents in an alley between stores (but a pretty wide alley nothing sketchy) and every little stand had things designed by the person selling them. There was a stand with all these really cool, original, kind of fancy dresses, this other place with a woman who made this cool headband with little tiny silk flowers in them that you could braid into your hair. And there was another with all these baby onesies with really colorful prints/patterns on them. They were soooo adorable. and some other really cool jewelry and headbands and I was debating whether I should buy one or not because they were kind of expensive like $15/20 dollars for a really cool headband (high quality it was no little cheap thing really) but I knew it was totally unnecessary. I wanted to support these women and people though, so it was hard. But in the end I didn't buy it.

Then we got hungry and Lena and I thankfully have compatible stomachs and palattes, and we both decided if we were going to spend money on something in São Paulo it would be the FOOD!
Sampa is known for the culinary experience that they offer, and honestly I'm sure that places like these back in California would be 4 times as expensive so we took advantage I guess.

I really wanted to go to this Mestiço (or Mestizo for you Spanish-speakers). It's supposed to be, as the title suggests, a fusion of cuisines from all over the world with Brazilian twist.

The menu :



Above the disposable (slash "keepable" souvenir) place-mat.
I ordered the Dehli, Indian-spiced grilled chicken rice and fried bananas.
Lena ordered some Thai curry plate.

They were both really delicious and worth it, it was may be like 20 dollars but I really think that the way the food looks does not do it justice. it was so delicious. And we also ordered freshly squeezed juice and the service was fantastic!



Then we walked back home. When I said we would be spending our money on food, it was intense. We didn't pay for bus or taxi or anything these were pretty long walks and even in the dark, but I noticed I didn't really feel unsafe at any point. It all seemed pretty safe, well-lit all the people we've met so far are really polite and helpful.
The accent they have here is very noticeable it's cool though it really makes the shift feel all the more dramatic.

At the hostel, everyone seems to be really nice I love Beto the guy who's at the front desk or rather supposed to be there, but he's really all over the place talking to everyone showing people around. He's this young cheerful guy with long hair brown hair, super accomodating and funny.
There is this other guy who started talking to me and Lena when we were in the living room planning/mapping out our next day and he is this like rocker guy with tattoos and a guitar, he really wanted to practice his English and I really wanted to practice my Portuguese so he spoke to me in English and I answered in Portuguese. So anyway he is from Sao Paulo, just visiting his friends that live at the hostel. He told us about his rock star dreams and how much he would like to get out of Sampa and go to California. He is a politician's son and he just doesn't like how the politics works there in the city. He told me he thinks everyone there is pretentious, materialistic, and snobby. So I don't know, may be he hung out with those kind of people, I don't think everyone I met today is like that although in a big city that's as wealthy (in some sectors) I guess that's always expected. But over all I have no complaints. Except my feet hurt! haha, but i think it was all worth it. Tomorrow is going to be another full day.