Category: General

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!

Had another crackin’ breakfast of homemade jam and bread. It might sound like we’re going on about this too much but breakfast has never been this good!

After having two cold showers each so far, Issy took a stand and asked if there was anyway to make the water warmer. It turns out we were using the shower wrong but now we’re fresh, clean and we’ve learned the valuable life lesson that “you should always ask questions to make life easier for yourself” (this trip is paying for itself already!)

We got the tube to the Pinacoteca today to work out the journey before we start tomorrow. Travel here is cheaper than you’d think considering that millions of people demonstrated about the rising price of public transport tickets in spring. A return ticket is R$6 or £1.69- the same price as a single in Preston!

The subway entrance is right next to the Pinacoteca, which is pretty handy. The first thing that you see when you walk up the subway stairs is a massive palm tree, and even though they’re all over the place here it still seems a surreal thing to see on the way to work.

It was difficult not to compare the Pinacoteca to the other galleries that we’ve seen here so far.

The Auditorio and the Museau Afro Brasil both seemed to have pretty casual attitudes towards the display of objects and preventive conservation. There were lots of objects on open display without “do not touch” signs in either and we couldn’t see any means of measuring light or relative humidity in either. We saw a little spider crawling underneath one object in an exhibit in the Museau Afro Brasil. We didn’t see any form of pest monitor and there was a pretty hefty amount of damp on the ceiling too.

The Pinacoteca seemed much more conservation- conscious and had a full space dedicated to raising conservation awareness that was translated into Portuguese, Spanish and English. We even had a sneaky peak at the lab because there are massive windows that allow the public to look in on the conservators at work, though nobody was in today with it being a Sunday.

The architecture and layout of the three galleries is very varied. We could go into loads of detail but now is not the time or the place so you can have a little overview instead….

The  most  notable aesthetic qualities of the Auditorio is are its dome shaped exterior with round windows, which make it look like a spaceship crossed with an igloo and its spacious interior, which give it a really relaxed atmosphere.

The interior and exterior shapes of the Museau Afro Brasil aren’t particularly striking but the museum does utilize colours in more  interesting ways. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside but we loved how the walls of the gallery are all painted in bright, bold tones of different colours reds, blues, purples, yellow and greens, without being over powering and detracting from the art. Again, it created a much more welcoming atmosphere than your average cold white gallery (yes White Cube gallery, I mean you).

The Pinacoteca’s architecure is a big old juxtaposition of late 20th c. fixtures that have been made to work the original late 19th c. building. That means a gorgeous gridded glass ceiling that makes the lights up the space and creates huge shadow patterns on the walls, a wine coloured lift that blends in with the brick work without being too cold and various little bridges to connect the floors.

There’s also a nice contrast of old and new artworks in the Pinacoteca too.

It was interesting to have our first real insight into 19th century Brazilian artists and it was strange to see how big an influence European art had on artists here. We saw copies of European paintings that had been copies of older painters. Meaning lots of second wave Brazilian expressionists and impressionists. The styles and subjects of lots of the pictures reminded me of the collection at the Harris Museum in Preston, which is full of paintings from the same era  but created by artists born thousands of miles away from Brazil.

We thought it was strange that we were Europeans visiting Brazil to learn about artwork created by Brazilians who went to Europe to learn about art.

Its getting late (can you tell? I’ve started rambling) and we’ve got six more weeks at the Pinacoteca to tell you about its many wonders so I will leave you with some of my photos from the Pinacoteca and the Jardim de Luz, the sculpture park next to the gallery.

Our first proper day here, our body clocks were a little messed up and woke us quite early around 7am Brazilian time. We then had cold showers (We don’t know how to make them warm, there is only one setting!) and breakfast, toast with some of the amazing pineapple jam Grace has mentioned before. We were unsure as to what to do first so we spent some time just in the hostel emailing families, working out more blog posts and organising our belongings. Then we had some of the last night’s left over veggie stew and pasta for lunch, yum.
Once we were organised and ready to go we wandered back to the Ibrapuera Park although we cannot find pedestrian crossings so it’s like a giant game of chicken, but we make sure it is very clear beforehand and ran across just in case (Don’t worry Mums). The park is so beautiful with huge lakes, lots of exotic trees and large sculptures. At the weekend it seems as if the whole of Sao Paulo congregate there to socialise, run, cycle, skate board or roller skate. The tarmacked paths are wide and have a special cycling lane, on each corner where the paths meet there are small stall holders selling ice cream, fresh coconut water, sweets, crisps and warm popcorn! While we wandered around this massive park we came across the Museua Afro Brasil, we went inside and spent about three hours wandering around looking at the amazing collection of art and artefacts relating to artists and Brazilian citizens of African descent. While there we decided to take our Portuguese dictionaries with us so we could look at the captions that go alongside the art and artefacts to work out the Portuguese for the materials and techniques used so we are prepared for the Pinacoteca. When walking back we found two massive bridges made out of scaffolding that cross over the roads, but these were very strange as it looked as if they had started to take them apart, no health and safety anywhere and some steps were much taller than others; then on top of one of the bridges there were lots of empty oil drums, very odd!
On the way back to the hostel we brought some of the warm popcorn as a treat, it was very yummy.
Finally thank you Lynnette for the dictionary, it has been very useful already!

So I have decided to upload a selection of photos from our first few days here.

Enjoy 🙂