A Hot, Busy Weekend

Marcin and I are staying in a hotel in the Bela Vista neighborhood right off Paulista Ave, the famous street in Sao Paulo that's supposed to be lined with "sky scrapers", but in reality, the buildings are only 15-20 stories high at most... and people actually compare this street to 5th Avenue in New York.  Anyway, it's a great location, one of the safest areas of the city and also one of the gay neighborhoods.  And the cost is the same as what Sean and I paid for dorm beds in the hostel we stayed in last month when we were in Sao Paulo.  I passed by the hotel the last time I was here and made a note to check it out if I returned to the city.  The rooms are quite small, but it's a very nice place otherwise.  It's very clean and they even have a convenience store in the lobby.  The only problem is that they charge for internet access, which is not cheap and only available in the lobby. 

 

We didn't do much after checking in Thursday night, so after having breakfast/lunch Friday morning, we decided to check out the Sao Paulo Zoo, something I didn't do the last time I was here.  While the zoo was nice and had some decent exhibits, I'm learning that I'm quite spoiled by the World Famous San Diego Zoo.  I also learned that Marcin and I share a love of the same animals, chimps and monkeys, so we spent a lot of time just sitting and watching them.  Otherwise, the zoo has all the other typical animals one would find at a zoo, but there were two interesting things about our time there that stood out.  1) We seemed to be touring the birds of prey exhibit during feeding time so we got to watch vultures, hawks, and other large birds eating, not freshly prepared, sliced, raw meat, but whole rats and birds.  Skin, feathers, legs, heads, blood, guts and all.  It was pretty disgusting.  It would be like the zoo feeding the tigers a fresh gazelle.  I can watch it on Animal Planet, but up close and in person is a little much.  The other interesting thing was the number of bees circling the trash cans and especially the tables and area surrounding the food stands.  As most of you should know by now, there is something strange going on causing bees worldwide to just die off and scientists are baffled as to why.  For as long as I can remember, I haven't seen so many bees, especially bees that were so active and all in one area.  Imagine flies on a garbage can on a hot summer day but replace the flies with bees.  That's how many there were.  We couldn't even sit down to eat because the bees were everywhere and especially attracted to anything sweet like soda.  It looked like one of those 1980's horror movies with all the bees swarming around.  You will all be happy to know, I didn't attempt to kill any of them and didn't even swat at them.  As much as I hate bees, I'm a little concerned about their survival. 

 

Saturday, we went to Parque Ibirapuera and the Afro-Brazilian Museum.  This is one of the things Sean and I did when we were in Sao Paulo, but the park and museum were so nice, I wanted to take Marcin there as well.  The museum also has so many pieces, you get tired after a couple hours so it's hard to see everything in one visit anyway.  We've mentioned this in some of our previous posts, but again, my only complaint with the museum is the lack of English descriptions and explanations of the various pieces.  I really feel like I would get so much more out of it if I understood Portuguese.  The weather was also not completely cooperative so we had a little drizzle, but it was still a nice enough day to walk around the lakes and paths and watch the kids, families and skaters. 

 

On Saturday night, we decided to check out one of the local clubs, something Sean and I didn't do when we were in Sao Paulo.  Sean and I were staying in a different area farther away from the bar and club scene so going out would have required taking a taxi which just makes everything that much more expensive.  Anyway, one of the most popular clubs here is called "A Lôca" and is literally a block away and on the same street as our hotel.  That kind of made the decision for us on where to go.  The club wasn't very big, but it was decently crowded.  They were playing electronic music, which I like, but Marcin doesn't, so we only danced for a little while.  We mostly sat, chatted, drank and checked out guys.  The most interesting thing about the night was that I was charged a lower price than Marcin and this time the difference as pretty significant.  Again, I can only assume this happens because I'm assumed to be Brazilian and before we even came to Brazil, people told us that places often have different prices for locals and tourists.  I didn't necessarily believe it at first, but I'm now convinced.  This post is long enough as it is, so I'll explain the whole story in a separate post.  Let's just say, Marcin is still pissed off about the whole thing.

 

Anyway, after getting to bed pretty late, we slept in Sunday morning and decided to go to Japan Town to check out the street market during the afternoon.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan and the Sunday street market is not only popular, it's hard to find a busier place in the whole city on the weekend.  It was a nice day for the street market, although at 93 degrees (34 degrees Celsius), it was hard to walk around for too long.  Marcin, who just arrived a few days ago from below freezing temperatures in Germany, is already complaining about the heat.  I've gotten somewhat used to it over the last few months, but it's still a lot to be walking around in crowds.  We took a lunch break and had Japanese food at a local restaurant.  My chicken teppan yaki was awesome, but Marcin was not too happy with his meal.  Nevertheless, it was nice to have something different considering there isn't much variety in Brazilian food and even I get sick of McDonalds sometimes.  After lunch, we walked to another part of town to check out the Catedral de Sé and Praca Sé.  Unfortunately, a mass was starting right after we walked into the church so we didn't really have a chance to see everything.  We then walked to another part of town and checked out the Sao Bento Monastery, but again, since it's Sunday, we arrived right in the middle of mass and while the chanting by the monks was very peaceful and nice to listen to, I'm not a big fan of Catholic services so we didn't stay.  We just took the subway back to the hotel to relax and listen to music in the pleasant air-conditioned calmness of our room. 

 

It's been a great weekend.

 

Cheers,

Ozell