Sao Paulo city center, little Tokyo and the Pinacoteca

Brazil is the first country that we visit during its high season. The rest of our travels so far have been in shoulder or low seasons. The walking tours for the next few days are all full, that is a first. 

There is a marathon planned in Sao Paulo on Sunday, so we decide to visit the historical center today to avoid the road closures and crowd. We walk the 20min that separates us from the downtown area to the cathedral’s square first. It’s beautiful from the outside, it has a huge dome – we feel like it has some Duomo influence in the design. Inside it’s not so heavily decorated as what we have seen so far.

We then wander the historical city triangle, which is mostly pedestrian, it’s a mix of tall buildings mixed with some old ones. An interesting mix – it’s not a whole section with only the old. Modern and ancient can be seen side by side. We walk our way to the Pateo Do Collegio. The block around it marks the oldest buildings of the city. We decide to pay for the small museum inside the Pateo – everything is in Portuguese so we don’t understand anything – but there is on the ground floor a model of the ancient city of Sao Paulo with the key monuments that are still standing as landmarks. It’s interesting.

Our walk continues to the Theater – when we arrive, we realized that you can book a slot for free to go inside the entrance to take pictures of the famous flight of stairs. The next one is in two hours, and we certainly won’t be spending time around just for a picture. You can see the staircase from the side doors or even from the forecourt window. I think it’s smart what they have done, at least the queue is managed so that everyone has a chance to get their picture “as if there is no one there”.

This was the last stop on our downtown walk. I would say that Sao Paulo is a good mix of modern and ancient. The only thing that is really unpleasant is the smell of piss. There are a lot of homeless people and drug users everywhere and the city reeks. We did feel safe though, it felt more like they were miserable and sad, than active during the day. Many were sleeping on the pavement or walking around collecting cans and glass from the trash bins.

We have been visiting archeological sites and museum for the past months – in Sao Paulo we are clearly in a city that has modern architecture and you can feel it’s resolutely looking to the future. There are some good modern art and contemporary art museums here. We start with the Pinacoteca Museum, which displays contemporary Brazilian artists. I didn’t recognize a single name and I used to go regularly and still do to exhibitions and art museums in Paris or abroad. There was a whole wing dedicated to Lygia Clark, one of Brazil’s important artists of this century. Her work is surprising and intriguing. 

I also liked the artist called Gervane de Paula, who comes from the Mato Grosso, and his art is more colorful and with an activist turn. We enjoyed some other artists more than others in their permanent exhibitions as well. We stayed almost 3hours in this museum. There were English explanations which made the understanding of the art easier. 

Surprisingly, after a long break in the park next to the museum, we found our legs again and decided to take the subway to little Tokyo. There is an important Japanese community in Sao Paulo and the district of Liberdade is where they settled down. But it was a mistake, on a Saturday, the area is cramped, impossible to walk and so full of people it was unpleasant. We were hoping to find a coffee shop and sit down for a while – we ended up power walking through the crowd to the next subway station. Every shop, café, restaurants was absolutely full with queues going outside furthering the circulation issues. On top of it all, these are not pedestrian streets, cars were trying to move through the crowd too…

We arrived at the next station tired and somewhat irritated. Alexis has broken his belt; I broke my water bottle and we need some new socks. It’s naturally that we decide to take the subway back to Paulista avenue and the malls. This will also get us closer to home.

While in the subway, we spot a nice little coffee shop in the back streets from the main avenue, we hope Paulista on a Saturday won’t be as crazy as Liberdade… When we arrive, it’s busy but the street is so wide, it doesn’t feel like it. We find our little coffee shop and they offer beautiful coffee from Brazil with nice and simple sweet snacks – plus there are no music! Peace and rest at last! We stay there a good while relaxing our feet and recharging the batteries.

We backtrack to the main avenue and start walking it down towards our accommodation stopping in the shops that might have what we need. And guess where we end up ? In Decathlon ! I got the water bottle and the socks. The belt we will find it later.

Back at home, we are tired and crash for a couple of hours. We have walked about 14 km today…

For diner, we have booked our first Churrasco – this famous Brazilian barbecue meal. It’s a buffet of grilled meat. The meat is on huge skewers and the waiter pass around and serves you small slices of the cut he is currently carrying. They are properly grilled and it’s delicious. We had burned enough calories for the day that we could enjoy this properly.