São Paulo, days 3-4

End of day 2

Vaca Veia! An awesome Boteco.



Day 3


Went to the fancy mall. Here you see a pair of Asics kicks which retail in the US for around $180. (Thank you Mrs Chirunnergirl for the pricing!)

In Brasil, they cost 800 reals, which is around $400 American dollars. The 2x markup was pretty standard on most of the models I was familiar with. This is the reason many Brazilians load their suitcases with clothing and electronics when in the USA. Stuff is absurdly expensive here.

And after seeing my garmin 210 retailing for over $500 US dollars in another sports store (current price in America around $200) I decided against bringing it to the park for my runs. There's a black market for everything. This particular mall had police with guns at every entrance as well as at many of the high end stores (Gucci, Missoni, Chanel, DVF...) which made up the entire mall. Safety is definitely an issue here.


For dinner we went to Braz, the best pizza place I've ever been. The slice on the left was pancetta, egg, and Parmesan cheese. The one on the right was shiitake mushrooms and red onions. You could taste the freshness of the ingredients. It was amazing!

I now understand why L's Brasilian friends say there's "nothing" good to eat when they visit america. The quality of ingredients in São paulo is far superior to our processed shit. *there are restaurants in the USA which source quality, sustainable, ingredients, but those are few and far between. I'm inspired to cook more now.

Day 4

Bom Dia Sampa!



Went for a run in the park like every morning so far- brought the small camera to take some photos (and not my garmin!) it's not so much the park being dangerous, but the walk to it.


I love running the 2.65 km loop. They also have places that sell fresh coconut water and coffee/snacks along the path.


Post run we went to a farmers market and bought a giant pastel filled with ham, cheese and tomato.


We also had a typical Brasilian breakfast of toasted bread with butter. YUM.



We then went to "Old Downtown." I did not bring my camera due to safety issues. It's a real shit show on certain streets with 1000's of people walking around. (And you can easily be pit pocketed)


We went to the top of the São Paulo version of the Empire State Building (Banespa) which was free and afforded an awesome view of this crazy big city.


After, we walked to the Municipal Market for one of the things we've been looking forward to since watching Anthony Bourdains "the layover" São Paulo...


MORTADELLA!!! Just look at the cross section on that sandwich! We each ate a half which was way toooo much food, but damn, that thing was delicious- especially with some ice cold beer. Absolutely worth going here.


The mercado was crazy! But it was incredibly clean and had beautiful high quality ingredients.


Sorry, but the fruit in America is pathetic compared to the quality of the fruit here in SP. we sampled some fruit that doesn't exist in the USA (that i cant remember the names of) and bought a "custard apple" to bring back to our hotel. (Large green one on the bottom left)

We also went to some churches.


Got kicked out of the one above for taking photos. :)



Another beautiful cathedral.
(But full of sketchy homeless people all around)


We walked to Liberdade (Japan town) afterwards to burn some of the 8000 calories of the sandwich.



The street lights kinda look Japanese, that's about it. There are some Japanese restaurants and magazine stands- I almost got a Vouge Japan.

After, we walked to another mall where I got a kick ass pair of Brasilian jeans from M Officer. They fit better than any other pair of jeans I've ever had in my life. (And make my butt look fantastic!)

Can't wait to go eat more fried things tonight! (And subsequently run a few extra laps at the park tomorrow)


Tchau!

- xaar