Chicken Hearts

Arrived in Sao Paulo yesterday without a hitch. Flight was easy, slept most of the time and Amanda was waiting for me at the arrivals gate. The taxi to the hostel was another story. Everytime I thought we were close, it was another 20 minutes of traffic and slamming on the brakes to avoid a bus. Alas, we are alive and well in Vila Malendena, Sao Paulo.

The hostel is cute. The staff here is amazing. One of the guys even whipped out a giant map of Brazil and South America and told us in detail everywhere we should go and how we can get there. A little overwhelming that we only have a little over 4 months to see such a large chunk of land. Very overwhelming to Amanda since England is roughly the size of Maine :)

We walked around yesterday in an artsy neighborhood nearby after getting some food where you have to weight your plate and pay per kilo. The food was really good and I was just grabbing everything to try it. We found a street called Grafitti Alley and took a lot of pictures of these obsecure art pieces. We also stopped to get some coffee and ended up with hot chocolate with the mug rimmed with chocolate frosting. Its a good thing I like chocolate as much as the Brazilans.

The hostel had announced that there was some jazz playing nearby and that we should check it out. We went there first to see if we could eat but decided against it and tried this kabob place instead. Portuguese is not like Spanish. I don´t care what anyone says. Not the same. At the restaurant we had to order kabobs of food individually. We ordered 2 chicken ones (I had found out what the word was for chicken), one brocoli and one mushroom. Then we saw one table had a bread with cheese one so we ordered 2 of those also. So the chicken came out really dark. I tried it and I thought it was chicken and it was, just not the part of the chicken that I was hoping to eat. Hearts that is. Amanda did not eat hers. We went to the jazz club later and stayed for some of the music, but we were really tired and left. Wish we would have stayed longer since we didn`t know we were paying a cover to get in.

Today we took the metro into downtown Sao Paulo. Very different from the area we are staying in. So far we´ve felt totally safe in our neighborhood, but the area we went to today is probably what the guidebooks are talking about when they discuss safety. We were fine and went to the top of one of the tallest buildings in Sao Paulo. I´ve never seen a skyline like that. Builings just for miles and miles and it was even cloudy today so I don´t know where they stopped. We went to a few churches and just walked around the area. Lunch was exciting because we pointed to some pastry type items in a window of the restaurant and said we wanted those. Turned out nice and very cheap. Then we took the metro to the Japan town. Surprisingly, Sao Paulo has the highest population of Japanese outside of Japan. Interesting area and we can´t wait to eat some suishi.

Metro back to the hostel. I had a situation with the lock on my backpack that I used as a carry on not wanting to open and we had that taken care of with a hammer from one of the lovely staff at the hostel.

Tonight maybe some Samba or more food. Definitely more food. Saturday is the big market day and then Sunday who knows. Sunday night we´ll be taking the bus to Iguassu Falls and then after that, the beach.