Sao Paulo, an introduction

This week, I got to know the big city.  And by big, I mean the seventh biggest city (by population) in the world.  The tall buildings tower over the streets that are crowded with people from all over the world, moving quickly to their job, their family, or to the metro, which is another story entirely.  The metro is a war, a brutal bloody war.  There is no mercy and there is no surrender. I only rode the metro during rush hour two times, but seriously, I feared for my life.  There is no line, its just a big glob of people pushing and shoving when the doors open.  Fortunately, I survived with my suitcases and head.  We rode the metro all over this city: to the neighborhood Liberdade, which is like NYC's china town, but Japan, where we ate some really fantastic food and marveled at the odd brands of candy and chips in the stores; to various museums that the city has to offer, filled with beautiful works of art, both recent and ancient; to their version of Grand Central Park (Ibirapuera) where we had a picnic; and to the 25th of Março, which is a scary and intimidating street.  It was like stepping into what I had always imagined to be India (minus the cows).  The street was shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip full of people, rushing here and there, people shouting out bargains or whatever they were selling, "Agua-agua-gua-gua-gua, dois reais!" and the air carried the smell of a strange combination of pollution, various perfumes, and people.  The reason that everyone is there is the amazingly inexpensive prices of all of the falsified brands of purses, jewelry, technology, and makeup sold on this street.  One of the touristy points of Sao Paulo, this street was certainly a site to be seen. But a site that was even more impressionistic for me was the famous Mercadao.  This is literally translated into "huge supermarket" and it is exactly this.  Filled with beautiful, rare and expensive fruit, meat, nuts, spices, drinks, oils, and other foods from around the world, this building made it to the top of my touristy wish list long ago.

Although it appears rather plain and simple from the outside, inside is a festa of colors, scents and flavors. 

 

Because the prices of everything are insane, I just counted on the samples to get me though the day.  You can ask to try just about everything and I went crazy on the fruit.  This odd little guy to the left is hard on the outside like a nut, with a huge seed inside covered with a little of this white, mucus-y fruit.  The way you eat it is cut off a little of the shell and bite hard to squeeze the seed into your mouth.  They you eat off the sweet fruit.  It was delicious, but a lot of work! 

 This fruit was a beauty, another delicate, lightly flavored fruit, but this time you could eat the seeds too.

This fruit was my favorite.  The color and dragon-like spikes on the outside already gained it some serious points.  The texture and the flavor of the meat of the fruit are truly splendid, reminding me a little of a plum. A very exotic plum.  

I felt like I could get lost in this building for hours, spending the whole day marveling at the different items that I had never heard of or could have imagined in my life.  And if I could get lost here, Sao Paulo is definitely where I could lose myself for months.  The city is filled with billions of things to do and see, to taste and experience, and to know.  I spent a short week there, but I should have given myself a month there just to get to know the bare tourist points.