São Paulo, Day 1-2

São Paulo!!

Sampa- nickname for São Paulo

Paulista- São Paulo native


This trip was 4 years in the making. I've wanted to visit São Paulo to see where L grew up, and to experience all the amazing places and things he talks about when he returns from business trips. I really had no idea what São Paulo was about before meeting him. The only things I knew of Brasil were Rio and the amazon before L.


(Our home for almost 11 hours, Cozy)



The only true way to kick off an 11 hour flight- with 1600mg of sodium!! Gingerfoxxx, I know you're proud. :)


The flight was long- like 10 hours and my legs were feeling achy within an hour of takeoff. I wore my compression socks and considered numerous times to remove them. I was convinced by the time we landed that my ankles would be swollen as hell. (Good news; they weren't)
I drank a liter of water and got up 4 times to stretch. It was a freaking long flight on a huge freaking plane.


Upon landing we had to go through immigration. It took me over 40 minutes because our plane landed behind a full Korean Air plane, and luckily before the Air France flight. Brasil does not use Federal Police for immigration but instead seems to hire out the jobs to people more interested in their cell phones. If our plane arrived 10 minutes later, I would have been in line over 2 hours!


GRU!

Once L got our bags, and I got through immigration the rest was a breeze. We met our friend at the airport who was super nice to drive us to our hotel. We are the "padrinhos" for his wedding- the main reason for our trip.


I was hoping to wake up from the long flight fluent in Portuguese, but that didn't happen :(

The 60-mid 70 degree humid weather is awesome! So happy to escape old man winter.


View of São Paulo


First meal in SP. Ice cold beer, linguisa sausage with tomatoes and onions, and a pastel de Santa Clara- a yummy egg filled pastry. It was at a Portuguese restaurant, And absolutely delicious!


I also can't forget the pastels- which are like fried wontons filled with ground seasoned beef or molten cheese. Heaven.


Papagaio Bem-Vindo!


Finished The night at the famous Bar Aurora with friends.


I really couldn't have been anymore Brasilian than sitting in this bar, watching UFC and drinking a passion fruit (maracuja) caipirinha. Unless I could actually speak Portuguese...

Day 2



Took a nice run in Parque Ibirapuera.


Then had breakfast with friends at "Pe de Parque" (foot of the park). It is an open air buffet next to the park which had a nice assortment of small pastries,fresh juices, scrambled eggs and pão de queijo. (Ooey gooey Cheese bread)


Also had a coffee.


This is a typical Brasilian coffee. Basically espresso in a 2.5" high cup. People here don't drink the huge coffees found at our local Starbucks, but instead small potent ones.

I also met L's parents for the first time. They were just as sweet as I had imagined. Even with our language barrier (I speak Portuguese at the level of a 2 year old) we got along great. We had an amazingly delicious lunch cooked by his mom and spent the afternoon with them.

I love this place!


- xaar