Here I am in London as I type this and it is now the 2nd month in February. Time for some more words about my trip abroad which ended with a a few days in Sao Paulo.
I was in Sao Paulo for almost 5 days; I went about things fairly leisurely; I did not have any burning desire to be running around and trying to cram everything in. It would have been good to go the beach; Sao Paulo is not by the sea but it is only a few hours from the sea. And people are always talking about going to beach. Must be part of the lifestyle there.
On Sunday January 13th, I went with Rodrigo to a club that was literally just around the corner from his apartment. But before that, I was asking Rodrigo if he could recommend any good pizza places in the area. And of course, there is a really good Italian restaurant just near the apartment. Check out the photos. I ordered a pizza that was half and half; one half was a medley of vegetables like eggplant and the other half was with zucchini and a type of salty cheese; I think is it called Polenguinho. Sao Paulo, like Buenos Aires, has lots of Italian food. The name of the place is "I Vitelloni Pizzeria". The pizza I had there was hands down better than some of the pizzas that i had in Buenos Aires. I heard people in Argentina remark that the Italian food there could be better than how it is in Italy and I heard some people in Brazil remark the same thing and they were apparently quoting Italian visitors to each place. I am not so certain but I have had so so Italian food in Italy on my travels; when I was in Rome once, I just keeping picking restaurants that were just borderline ok to so so. I should have paid more attention and made use of guidebooks; they do take the mystery and randomness out of things after all.
http://www.ivetellonic.com.br
I just had a look at the web-site and they have photos online of the pizzas on offer. Some of the pizzas are quite something to look at.
Back to the music, so later that night, Rodrigo took me to his local haunts. And that night there was going to be live music. The music is called forró. The music comes from the North of Brazil and is folkloric in tradition. When we got to the club, it was quite full of people dancing. And people were dancing holding each other so it was not one of those types of music where you just dance in front of someone but you are actually dancing with them. Rodrigo was encouraging me to ask someone to dance but I was hesitant because I did not know much Portuguese and the moves for the dance. But I do really want to learn the dance they were doing. I did buy a CD of the trio was playing that night. They are called "Trio Virgulino". At some times during the night, they were joined by other musicians. The trio were playing: a large drum, an accordion and a triangle. They three members of the band would alternate with the singing of the songs. It was a fairly youngish crowd that night; most of the men were dressed in a rather urban style like they could have easily been at a rap concert; the band members looked a bit older. than the crowd - ha ha. I tried a few typical Brazilian drinks with difficult name to pronounce and of I course I forget the names right away. It was great to see all the people dancing and enjoying themselves. I understand there is a Brazlian night club in London; I wonder if they have forro nights.
http://www.triovirgulino.com.br/trio.asp
A very good night out indeed thanks to being with someone in the know. But I remember some nights were not pleasant. The mosquitoes in Sao Paulo like Buenos Aires were such pests. I would got something like 5 or 6 bites on my feet within a few minutes in the middle of the night and than I would have to suffer through the initial pain and wait for it to subside. My question is does one mosquito do all the biting? I would never heard more than one mosquito at any time. You know when you are trying to sleep and your hear a mosquito buzz you and you try to slap it; you mostly just end up slapping yourself on the head. And these mosquitoes were fairly big as well. I did eventually spot one during the day and I dispatched; it was her or me.
Then comes Monday, I wanted to get some culture in. Through Mari - Rodrigo's sister, I arranged for a tour guide. Daniel is a journalist who lives ini Sao Paulo and he is of course very knowledgeable about his city. Unfortunately, Monday is the wrong day to go to museums in Sao Paulo; we attempted to go to about 4 places and they were all closed. But we did walk around the city a bit. We walked through a part of the city which was like a "Little Italy" and Daniel would talk about the city. We were walking along and Daniel suggested we try out this restaurant. The speciality there was a dish made with beef jerky. I should mention that Daniel was accompanied by his friend Mabel from Bolivia. She was in Brazil on holiday. So the three of had lunch in a place called "Rancho Nordestino". The place looks very typical and homey with many many restaurants reviews on the wall. We had the dish and it was very tasty. I don't think I have ever had a dish that was made with beef jerky on any kind of dried meat before. The dish was made with onions and a cooked grain that added to the texture. And there was 2 types of condiments to add to the dish: melted butter sauce and chilli oil. Brazilians definitely eat more spicy food then they do in Argentina. In the few restaurants I went to, you would often see Tabasco sauce on the table if you wanted to pep up what you were eating, The cuisine is from the North of Brazil the name of the restaurants seems to support that.
We walked through the old centre of Sao Paulo and had a look at church there. Apparently, it is possibly the largest cathedral in South America. We did also saw some Art Deco style buildings in the area. We went by the museum of Portuguese in Sao Paolo and it located near a train station that was built by an English company.
After all the fun, looking for an museum, we then went to the Japan-town in Sao Paulo. The largest population of Japanese ancestry outside Japan is in Brazil.
http://www.discovernikkei.org/wiki/Topics
So we had a stroll about the area and stopped for a beer in a bar/cafe. We ended up chatting a bit with a fellow named Wilson from Sao Paulo. A big gregarious guy with a good command of English. He later gave me a map of Brazil as a gift. We were thinking about what to to next but then another torrential downpour started so we decided to wait awhile for the rain to subside. Yeah, I was reminded of the fact that Sao Paulo is a situated in a place that gets a good amount of rain.
The plan then was to go find some live Samba music. Daniel knew of a club in Villa Madelena. So we proceeded on our way there. On the way there, Daniel pointed out a street that is full of florists. And the shops here stay open 24 hours a day so there is no excuse about not being to buy flowers in Sao Paulo.
We get to club after a subway and taxi ride later to find out that the club does not have any power. We told to come back a bit later and hopefully by then power would be restored. So we wandered around the area a bit and saw a school-yard full of teenagers practising juggling. We stopped there to watch the kids practice their technique.
We then went back tot the club and it was still not open. Thoughts turned to having some beers and there was a restaurant just up the road. And we did get some beers and also had some really good food. The place is called "O Pico Espeto Bar" and they specialise in food all grilled on skewers. Being a Monday night, there was just to 2 young men working there. One guy doing the cooking and the other doing the serving and taking orders. And again, the place was really friendly. I was trying to communicate in what little Portuguese I knew. I remember talking with Daniel about language. He saying how Brazilians speak differently than people from Portugal. He said it was often that when speaking with someone from Portugal, he could not tell what they were saying as they don't enunciate like Brazilians do.
And the third time, we went back to the club "O do Borogodo; they were open thankfully. And it was already starting to get full; the time now was approaching midnight. We drank more beer and stayed a few hours. There was a live six piece band as expected with a female vocalist. And of course, we heard Samba music. It was the time leading up to carnival and all over the city Samba schools would be rehearsing for the Carnival in Rio. I did catch a glimpse of some Samba schools on Friday night and they were so busy; the one we attempted to go was too busy actually so we did not stay.
So on Tuesday, I went back to see some of the museums that were closed on Monday: Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP) & The Itau Cultural. I met up with Daniel again.The MASP museum was in the news recently over some paintings that were stolen and then recovered. The museum was re-opening while I was in Sao Paulo. It was quite interesting to see an exhibit of works by Tatsumi Orimoto at Masp. I had not heard of this artist before and the exhibit of his works mostly represented in photography was quite extensive. We also had a look at the permanent collection at MASP and we saw some significant pieces by Brazilian artists through the ages.. The Itau Cultural space was entirely focused on contemporary art from what I saw. And actually Itau is a major bank in Brazil and they have set up a dedicated art space. Some of the installations were quite intriguing. There was one installation which was sand sculpted to look like a landscape with various size speakers inserted into the sand emitting noise; the piece is called "Deserto" by Paulo Vivaacqua..
http://www.itaucultural.org.br/
http://masp.uol.com.br/exposicoes/2008/tatsumiorimoto/
http://www.revistalugares.org.br/lugares_xml.html
Later that night, I would catch my flight back to the UK. I did also visit a design studio called "Bijari" in the afternoon that D.C. put me in touch with. This is a subject for another post. There was probably a few others things to type about - more coming soon (I hope).