It's almost 9am here on Day Three in Sao Paulo, we have to check out in a couple of hours. My first regret of this trip is not having a little longer here. After tiny country towns, Sampa has felt much more familiar to us, and I wish I hadn't listened to as many people tell us it wasn't worth the time of day.
>>As i made my breakfast the lady stood and watched me. she was again having her 6 ham and cheese toasties. pie.<<
Ah, the comical folk we encounter in hostels. Sarah has nicknames for them all. The coffee is still good though.
Finally feel like we are getting on top of backpacking, even if we are still overwhelmed with our future plans (or not, more later). We now arrive with addresses, booking codes, how much is paid and to be paid, directions, metro stops, the works. No more taxis for the lost.
Still, the price of buses is haunting us, particularly in Argentina, where the distances are so enormous. A single stretch could cost £70 or so, twice what we are paying in Brazil. Of course, Argentina is the country that you can't avoid either. We have decided to spend less time circulating there, though, and just go through it straight.
None of which bears much weight with the past few days. From rolling into Sampa on Tuesday morning we have been tired and grumpy, every bus a learning curve, but also every overnight bus a ruination of our sleeping patterns. The lull of the drive has us dozing on and off, waking in fits at bus stations and wondering what time it is. I think we want to minimise the length of bus journeys we take, try and stop regularly and sometimes see crap towns. Provided the budget allows of course.
Sao Paulo is an enormous city, the biggest in Brazil, 20 million people in the area, and with a cosmopolitan character to match. You see people here you haven't seen elsewhere in Brazil - goths, hipsters, wiggers, men with stupid moustaches who still think its Movember, plus the morass of people just bored on the metro, sleeping and hoping that some weirdo doesn't bother them. For city dwellers its just utterly familiar, reassuring and easy.
It doesn't stop it being impossible to get a map of the place, mind you. Our hostel doesn't have one, and we're damned if we can find a tourist information spot. We jump from our very convenient Parada Iglesa metro stop to Luz station, then go walking, tummies rumbling and in need of a buffet. So we get lost.
>>As i made my breakfast the lady stood and watched me. she was again having her 6 ham and cheese toasties. pie.<<
Ah, the comical folk we encounter in hostels. Sarah has nicknames for them all. The coffee is still good though.
Finally feel like we are getting on top of backpacking, even if we are still overwhelmed with our future plans (or not, more later). We now arrive with addresses, booking codes, how much is paid and to be paid, directions, metro stops, the works. No more taxis for the lost.
Still, the price of buses is haunting us, particularly in Argentina, where the distances are so enormous. A single stretch could cost £70 or so, twice what we are paying in Brazil. Of course, Argentina is the country that you can't avoid either. We have decided to spend less time circulating there, though, and just go through it straight.
None of which bears much weight with the past few days. From rolling into Sampa on Tuesday morning we have been tired and grumpy, every bus a learning curve, but also every overnight bus a ruination of our sleeping patterns. The lull of the drive has us dozing on and off, waking in fits at bus stations and wondering what time it is. I think we want to minimise the length of bus journeys we take, try and stop regularly and sometimes see crap towns. Provided the budget allows of course.
Sao Paulo is an enormous city, the biggest in Brazil, 20 million people in the area, and with a cosmopolitan character to match. You see people here you haven't seen elsewhere in Brazil - goths, hipsters, wiggers, men with stupid moustaches who still think its Movember, plus the morass of people just bored on the metro, sleeping and hoping that some weirdo doesn't bother them. For city dwellers its just utterly familiar, reassuring and easy.
It doesn't stop it being impossible to get a map of the place, mind you. Our hostel doesn't have one, and we're damned if we can find a tourist information spot. We jump from our very convenient Parada Iglesa metro stop to Luz station, then go walking, tummies rumbling and in need of a buffet. So we get lost.
This is SP's equivalent of Tottenham Court Road. A mile of hi-fi and computer shops.
Where we found our nice buffet restaurant with freshly bbq'd meats and we ate like kings and the chef shook my hand.
Typical fancy architecture.
Parque Buenos Aires, 100 years old this year.
A statue of a man being bitten on the bum by a lion. He looks unimpressed.
Good street art. Lots of that down here.
Typical church of which there are a million.
Downtown Sampa.
Back at sundown, watch some news about Brazil and realise disaster is following us...
Wednesday morning, it's time for another football day. I head east to what will be Arena Corinthians when its finished. At the minute, however, its just Arena "Where the first world cup game will be played, IF its finished on time, and where a crane fell and killed a man".
The attractive Estacão Da Luz suburban train station
The view of the stadium from the Corinthians train station, half an hour out of town eastwards.
The road in progress.
I'm guessing this is where the car park will be beside the stadium, its the only logical thing to put there.
The front of the stadium.
The front head on. For those interested, it looks like the pitch is sunk well below ground level.
The pitch, looking pretty healthy from here.
The crane is still lying there.
The site is just carrying on, no particularly grim air about the place, but it must have been a noisy experience the day that crane came down. Its very difficult to imagine the stadium will be done in time, the damage here just looks too severe. Still plenty of workers just lying around on the ground sleeping too.
Head back and collect Sarah, we head into the Centro again, this time to São Bento station, and go for a wander and a feed.
Enormous blocks!
Churches on every corner!
Attractive Art Deco architecture!
Churches gone to pot!
Festive shoppers watching the Brazilian Police's Tactical Force Armed Unit get involved in something! Lots of guns! Just like being at home!
More attractive buildings, this time covered in tags!
To hell with it, we think its going to rain, and I want to watch the Casablanca v Minerão World Club Cup game. We get back to our neighbourhood and find a pub with a tv and watch it. Casablanca dominate throughout. It is fun watching Brazilian football in Brazil.
Finish our day discussing the coming weeks. I have a theory regarding holidays, which states you may have three priorities when booking your vacation. They may be that it is cheap, that you want sun, that there must be good nightlife, even the specific location, and so on. But only three. Because if you are more specific than that then finding your holiday becomes much more difficult. This theory has been very successful for us over the past few years. Money is almost always the main priority, followed by sun. 'Where' is rarely one of those priorities.
For the rest of our trip we must apply the same principles, because we have been much too ambitious whilst trying to keep too tight a rein on our wallets. The result has been frustration and head-banging off the walls, which disturbs the neighbours. So now we have a new idea. One which involves lying on some beaches in Uruguay...
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