São Paulo

So this was my first experience of Brazil, no beaches, dammit! It blew away one of my preconceptions about Brazil totally, it was full of big people. I had been quite sure that I would feel big, fat and ugly, it turned out I didn't compare so badly. Rio was different, definitely a fitter city but even so... anyway the food is AMAZING and I'm quite sure that given time I would balloon too!

We stayed at (Djalma's brother's) Sidarta's apartment, which is in a beautiful part of the city, lots of trees along winding hilly streets. The first night we went to a Churras place, a BBQ restaurant (the first of many!) where I met some of his relatives, everyone was so nice but man I was tired and having eaten 5 or 6 meals already, my appetite just didn't do the food justice at all. The next day Ned, Djalma and I went for breakfast at the local bakery, man it was good. We bought my first pair of flipflops afterwards :)
It all fades into a bit of a haze but São Paulo included a couple of trips around the centre, through Catedral da Sé, the square and market outside it and then on another day we went with Rafa to the top of the tallest building to check out the view of the skyline which is what I expected São Paulo to look like - it really doesn't look that crowded or tall from the ground! We had some VERY expensive drinks in the lounge at the top of the building which was Italian (the name eludes me now but I will find out and update this!).
On the same day we wandered round Libedade which was the Japanese district but has since welcomed a large number of Chinese and Korean immigrants. The food was fantastic, I can't remember the name of what we ate but it was deepfried and damn tasty. And the juice, my god, the juice. There are so many bars which serve fresh juice - they blitz the fruit some ice and occassionally sugar and serve it to you - always fresh and so so good.