We headed from the beach into the city of Sao Paulo or more accurately Sao Bernardo where our dear friends Claudinei and Fatima live.
They are incredible hosts. First thing was some Maracuja or passion fruit Caipiroskas before dinner.
Claudinei invited his work friend Abdul to join us for a tour of downtown Sao Paulo. He is a great guy, but he also speaks perfect English and so helped us with understanding Portuguese.
We needed to get a new computer cord so we braved the packed electronics district in the week before Christmas. I think you can buy just about anything here.
Of course Dan had to see the Brazilian stock exchange.
We saw some of the main sites including the cathedral, the Theater, a 450-year-old college, and the famous 25 of March shopping street.
This plaque in front of the Cathedral marks the original city center.
They have these great pedestrian signs here which are different depending on which historic building they are near. This is for the Theater.
Next we made our way over to the huge Public Market.
We then headed over to the biggest park in the city. They really do up the holiday decorations here. There is a massive domed building there, which is an exhibit hall and there was a nice collection of old photos of the city.
We all went out for sushi Brazilian style, which means it has cream cheese in it. Notice the chop stick helpers for those of us not from Vancouver.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/qv5p1s][img]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8635/16081598662_4893df10a6_c.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/qv5p1s]DSC06523[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/people/60754081@N02/]Worldwide Ride.ca[/url], on Flickr
To finish the night we drove across town at 130 am to the practice arena for the Samba school for the Palmera football team. We saw the secret warehouse full of the decorations for the Carnival float. There are awesome, but of course secret. The team spends 2 million dollars on the float and costumes for the 3800 dancers.
Sunday we recovered, but had to go for an amazing Churrascaria lunch before heading back to the beach. The parking lot was mobbed. For those who have never had Brazilian BBQ you have a sign that says yes or no to alert the waiters if you are still hungry.
