Last Day in Sao Paulo

Just can't seem to get away from the rain. It's still rather warm though. The 1/2 day when the sun was shining it was really hot and I couldn't imagine what it's like here in the summer. On our last day in Sao Paulo we set out to get to the Jardin and Bela Vista area. First, though we made a quick pit stop at the shopping centre near the hotel to see what a football jersey cost. We were still really pumped with our experience and thought it would be cool to buy a jersey. They are quite pricey, just like Canucks jerseys back home, so we didn't end up buying anything. Ziad did end up buying an Easter egg though because he was so curious to see what these things were all about. He had heard that easter eggs are a big thing in Brasil and we saw them everywhere in stores. They are these packages, shaped like big eggs with really nice wrapping. There are many different types and themes on the wrapping. The one he ended up buying was a milk chocolate one and he was a little disappointed when he opened it up and found a big chocolate egg with tattoo stickers inside. All that hype for nothing...

We hopped on the bus and metro afterwards, getting the hang of using public transit a little better. By the way, another major city I've visited and there's no such thing a just walking on the metro without going through a turnstile. When will Vancouver learn? We got to the Jardin area. It's a quite modern area with lots of tall buildings and looked like it might house some of the financial offices. We saw Citibank and HSBC. There is HSBC advertising everywhere, especially at all the airports. Anyway, the area was quite nice and I think it was more of an upper-class area given the look of the apartments buildings we saw. There also seemed to be quite a number of medical offices in the area with a couple hospitals as well. It was somewhat of a hilly area, but nothing too bad. We spotted our first Starbucks and went in just to compare prices. They seemed about the same, but they had more chocolate options. Seems like the Brasilians really like their chocolate. Thankfully we haven't seen a lot of "American" chains here. So far, I've only seen 1 McDonald's, 1 Burger King, 1 TGIF and this Starbucks. Interestingly enough I've seen 3 Subways.

We also at some point ventured into the Bela Vista area, but we're not sure when that happened, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. But it didn't matter because this part of town was just as nice. For lunch we stopped at one of the many street side cafes. We had a great lunch and ordered by pointing at the pictures, well that's at least what I think Ziad did. I pointed out the picture to him that I thought I would like and he ordered. The food was great and was very affordable, $26R for both of us. I had a beef/sausage type dish with rice and french fries while Ziad got pork, beans, rice, refried beans and a salad of some sort. I had a mango fruit juice, which I found to be watered down and Ziad had a lime drink which was really tasty. I secretly wanted to switch drinks, but that would not have been fair. After lunch we just continued our walk around just checking out the neighbourhoods. We ended up leisurely walking back to our hotel to check a taxi to the airport. It took us about 2 hours. It was quite pleasant despite the on and off again rain. I was surprised to see the amount of auto repair shops along the route we took. It seemed like every second store front was a repair shop.

Next stop, Curitiba. But, will we make it there as scheduled?