We had crashed at about 12 last night following the world’s biggest pizza and woke up this morning with the intention of going to Boicanga, a beach in the north of the state about 90 miles from the city of Sao Paulo.
However, we all know that the best made plans never quite work out so we got there about ten minutes too late and bought return tickets for tomorrow instead! We know the bus station now and will hopefully soon be so pro at buying tickets that we won’t need to ask “errr voce fala ingles? no? errr voce fala espanol? no? erm. ok… duas…bilhetes… por favor…” which has become one of our most used sayings.
Once we had bought the tickets we decided to check out some of the areas that the girls from the Pinacoteca had recommended.
Liberdade is the largest Japanese community in the world outside of Japan and Tatiana had told us it was filled with market stalls at the weekend. She wasn’t wrong. We had a wander through the markets and stuttered our way through small talk in a mish mash of languages with stall holders.
We decided to look for somewhere to eat and ended up in a quiet side street where a man dressed up asked us something in Portuguese. We had the classic only-speak-a-little-bit-of-Portuguese-do-you-speak-English-or-Spanish conversation and ended up being led in to speak to a woman in Spanish who then showed us vegetarian dishes on a menu. The situation felt strange though we were reassured when a massive group of Japanese people sat down at the table next to us- always a sign of a good Japanese restaurant!
We had absolutely no regrets once the food arrived, in fact I think its one of the best life choices I have ever made. Issy added that it was worth going to Sao Paulo for (thanks again ZGTF!)
Our complimentary starter was a tasty dish of sesame leaves cooked in garlic that we could easily have had five helpings of.
We shared mains of Yasai Tempura and Light.
The Yasai Tempura was battered veg with a lovely dip and a nice side of radish and ginger.
Light was a big selection of mixed veg that was cooked in sesame oil.
Sweet Heavens what a good meal. Some food makes you glad to be alive and those were two such dishes.
We will return to Liberdade to buy Agar at some point but we were strapped for cash after buying the tickets and the food so that will have to wait for another day.
Our plan was to walk from Liberdade to Sao Bento station, and take in the sites of the famous Sao Bento district on the way but as luck would have it we found a Free English Walking tour to latch on to.
The charismatic host of the tour had a big smile, hair like a badger and started every sentence of his enthusiastic insights with “Well!”
We reckon that we were the only English people in the tour- we didn’t even see any Americans- but there were still about fourty people from all over the world following our leader by the end.
We learned a few interesting bits of trivia that we wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Our hostel hosts different functions every Saturday. Today is some type of party to sell jazzy, colourful underwear so there have been lots of people about playing the type of music you imagine when you think of Brazil. (Last weekend was a raw vegan cooking class! It was booked up but after months of being told I’d be eating rice for six weeks you can imagine how happy I was to hear that the English got the cosmopolitan Brazilians of Sao Paulo wrong!) Once the kitchen is free we’re going to eat and then who knows. Sao Paulo is our oyster.
Hope everything’s well on the other side of the Atlantic!
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