We’re going to take it in turns to post so I’ll let you know how we got on yesterday!
The flight was great! It was the first long haul flight for both of us and we can definitely get used to travelling with complimentary wine and movies ( I advise you to watch the Internship and Issy would advise you against seeing the Bling Ring or the Big Wedding!) BA’s vegan food options were lovely too so I didn’t even need to crack into the Bourbons until we got here!
On the flight we met Tatiana, a lovely Brazilian lady who had been at a conference in the Czech Republic and gave us some tips on places to visit in Brazil, and Robbie possibly- probably!- the world’s best flight attendant who gave us many useful tips and sneaked us a cheeky pot of hand cream that is complimentary for first class passengers.
We didn’t sleep much on the plane so we were pretty tired when we arrived at 5.50am. Our hostel owner, Gustavo picked us up from the airport and drove us back to the hostel. We got our first glimpse of Sao Paulo to a soundtrack of chilled out of Brazilian and English music. We couldn’t get over how big the city is! There are endless amounts of skyscrapers. Apparently if you go to the tallest building in Sao Paulo you can’t even see the end of the city on the horizon. The congestion was really bad because the population here is so huge and it was strange to see so many enormous tropical trees in between the hundreds of cars that we were stuck in traffic with.
Our hostel is lovely- brightly coloured tiles and paintings everywhere, along with big bean bags and cushions. We’ll get some photos up when the Internet decides to let us. The hostel staff that we’ve met so far, Gustavo, Natalie and Mia, are all really helpful and friendly.
Our neighbourhood, Vila Mariana is very clean and interesting, loads of huge, well-kept apartment blocks.
We took a walk to the beautiful Ibrapuera Park and visited the Auditorio. There was an interesting exhibition about a Brazilian accordion player and all around good- time guy called Luiz Gonzaga. Listen to his album, Volta Pra Curtir here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRaki3I5K5M
We made a crackin’ lentil and veg stew for dinner- food seems pretty cheap as we did a fairly big shop for £10 between us. Breakfast is included and we found our that they make their own bread and jam! here We had some gorgeous pineapple jam this morning and apparently Natalie is very experimental with her fruit combinations and her previous jam creations include combinations like melon and strawberry!
We’re going to explore some more today and we’ll update again tomorrow!
