Our flight arrived back at GRU airport in Sao Paulo at
5am. At this point, I’m good to not fly
for a few days….and also to sleep in the same bed and hotel room for a few
nights! Originally, our plan was to wait
for the rest of the group to arrive at the GRU Airport and to catch
transportation to the hotel together.
However, we learned after we grabbed our baggage that their flight from
Houston had been delayed. Since we were
absolutely exhausted, we decided to see if the hotel could check us in early so
we could catch some Zzz’s before going out on our tour of Sao Paulo with the
group. After a quick phone call, we
learned that they were able to book us into two rooms. We caught a cab and off we went!
Holy CRAP was the traffic horrible! The three of us ended up dozing in the ~hour
it took for the cab driver to get us to our hotel, the Tulip Inn Interative in
the Jardins district. Check-in was
painless, and after sending Jo a quick text message of our change in plans, we
showered in our respective hotel rooms and crawled into bed to get some sleep.
Jamie and I woke around 1pm, got dressed, and headed down
to the lobby to meet the group. We were
off on a bus tour of Sao Paulo! I loved
our tour guide, Doris. Not only was her
English excellent, but she was brutally honest and a true lover of Sao Paulo
(though this might have something to do with the fact that she’s both a
Paulista (from the state of Sao Paulo) and a Paulistana (from the city of Sao
Paulo)).
Our first stop was at the Sao Paulo Municipal Mercado
(Market) which was just an overwhelming of the senses. The colors, smells, and the tastes were just
awesome. A lot of people ordered some
food at one of the food stands, specifically trying out the Pao de Quejo
(cheese balls) and empanada like pastries with chicken and cheese inside. The young person who waited on us was just as
excited about dealing with Americans (by taking our photos) as we were to be in
Brazil at the market! As we neared the
end of our walking tour of the market, Doris had a vendor let us try two
fruits; a pear-like fruit which was amazingly sweet (with seeds) called
Atemoia, and a cherry-like fruit that also had seeds, that was a little
bitter-sweet and native to Brazil, called Jabuticaba.
We all loaded back into the van and headed over to the Sao
Paulo Cathedral, which had a lovely set of steps leading up to the main
entrance. Even though it was a rainy
afternoon, there were still plenty of people milling outside on the steps and
inside throughout the building. The
stained glass inside the cathedral was absolutely breathtaking. After we had gotten our share of seeing the
sights within the Cathedral, we took a bus-tour through the Jardins district so
we could get the lay of the land and an idea of what was around our hotel for
shops (can you say Chanel, anyone)? The
main street with these upscale shops was called Oscar Freire and is well known
for being high-end, which a few lower-end shops, such as Adidas and Ben and
Jerry’s (yes, you read that right, VT followed us to Brazil!).
We were dropped back off at the hotel with direction to be
ready in a few hours to be bussed to a local Churrascaria, called Vento Haragano. I had been to a Brazilian Steakhouse before
and knew what to expect, but it was fun to experience the restaurant with those
that hadn’t done it before. The side
dishes were absolutely amazing and the meat (of course) was to die for. I had the tenderest, fall apart steak that I
could have eaten for days! Three of us
girls ended our meal with a chocolate lovers cake that had a crunchy shell on
the outside, that was amazingly sweet and delicious, as well.
After dinner we were dropped back off to the hotel and I
headed to bed to end the long day. What
a great one!
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