Exploring Sao Paulo, Brasil – Damian’s hometown!

I am so excited to share with you our adventures in São Paulo, Damian’s hometown! To give a little bit of background, São Paulo (SP) is in the southeast of Brasil and is the biggest city in the country. It is over 3 million square miles big with a population of over 12 million people (as a point of reference New York City is about 470,000 square miles with a population of over 8.5 million). Damian’s parents are both U.S. midwesterners and volunteered for the Peace Corps in Brasil when they were in their 20s. In the late 1970s they decided to move their family to SP. Damian was born there and lived in the city until he was 15, when his family moved back to Minnesota.

We had about four full days to explore SP, and, as you can imagine, it was not even close to enough. We tried hard to stay the course of “slow traveling” and not pressuring ourselves to see everything, but the FOMO was real.

We arrived in the city late on Friday, on a flight from Iguazu Falls (IGU)  into Guarulhos International Airport (GRU). After waiting an eternity for our gate-checked bags we called an Uber to get to our AirBnB (note: I much prefer Lyft over Uber but alas Lyft is not available in most places outside the U.S.). Uber is super well-established in SP and there were signs and a specific waiting area for Uber passengers. To get from GRU to the city took about 45 minutes, which was a breeze compared to what normal SP traffic can be like! We checked in to our AirBnB and hit the sack pretty early that night.

To give you a high-level lay of the land our AirBnB was in an area calls Jardim Paulista, which felt like the Upper West Side of SP. Damian’s family first lived in an apartment nearby in Pinheiros, which was closer to the main river through the city (Tiete) and still with an Upper West Side apartment feel. When he was five they moved to a house in Granja Julieta, which has a much more residential feel. The other two areas we spent time in while here were Centro, which is the downtown of the city (felt similar to the Wall Street area in New York) and Vila Madalena, which is like the Williamsburg/Brooklyn of SP (not to be confused with an area of SP actually called “Brooklin”!).

Saturday was our first full day in SP and there was just so much that we wanted to do. But, we also wanted to keep the day “free and flowy”. What our general style is when we visit a city is to pick a few “anchor spots” that we want to make sure to hit and then the rest of the time we walk/bus/subway/taxi between them – sometimes taking the direct route, but more often than not taking a meandering route. This was especially fun in SP because there is so much amazing street art to see. On Saturday we have three anchors – Rua Oscar Freire, the Benedito Calixto Market and then Bar Samba!

Rua Oscar Freire was our first stop, it is essentially the Rodeo Drive or 5th Avenue of SP. What was interesting to see was that most of the high-end stores on the street were local, Brasilian designers vs. American or others. There was also the biggest Havaianas store I have ever seen. The wall in the picture above shows maybe a quarter of the full selection they had there (and we couldn’t resist buying cute baby Havaianas for when we have a one-year old bambino one day – and no, not pregnant, not for a while).

The second stop was a street market in Benedito Calixto, in the Pinheiros area of town. There are a bunch of these street markets in the city and this one was focused on antiques and hand-made goods. It was super interesting to see all the offerings and I was so tempted to buy an old Remington typewriter, I mean, could you imagine how perfect it would be to be sitting on a deck in a house in Italy we are renting and typing the day away? Alas it was expensive and completely impractical, but fun to dream about. And, of course, on our walk there and around we continued to be surrounded by amazing street art. I cannot wrap my head around how people can have the skill to conceptualize and execute such beautiful murals at such a large scale.

But, the most exciting and fun part of the day was ending up at Bar Samba in Vila Madalena! On Saturday afternoons Bar Samba opens at 1pm and has a live Samba band playing throughout the afternoon. We got there around 2pm and ate some (ok, a lot of) delicious pasteis (similar to an empanada – fried dough filled with either meat or cheese) and drank our first caipirinhas (Brasil’s traditional drink made of cachaca (sugar cane liquor), sugar and lime). Damian had a passion fruit one and I had a kiwi one and they were so delicious.

Then after we ate we got our butts up and onto the dance floor! We made friends with some locals who tried to teach us how to Samba dance. It’s quite easy when you are going slow, but then gets much harder to execute when moving faster. All in all we stayed at Bar Samba and danced until the early evening and had so much fun! Below you can see a little video of one the locals dancing super well and then Damian trying to imitate her. We walked back to our AirBnB after this, stopping to see some Eduardo Kobra art on the way (more on that below) and then called it a night.

On Sunday we decided to make our own self-guided tour of Eduardo Kobra‘s street art. Kobra is a Brasilian street artist that I am obsessed with. I first saw his work in New York and then recognized another piece in Jersey City.

Kobra has a very distinct and beautiful style, and, what’s more is that as I read more about him I learned that he’s an amazing activist and person as well. Above is a piece that he is still working on, obviously of Albert Einstein. The rest of this piece is just even more jaw dropping and I think is the best summary of his work and philosophy that I’ve seen. I’m going to do a separate post on all of his works that we saw, so more of that and his works and our “tour” to come.

Another big anchor stop on Sunday was Beco do Batman – aka Batman alley. This is a street/area that is similar to Hosier Lane in Melbourne, it’s the place with the highest concentration of street art in SP (I think? I kind of just made that up, but it sounds right) and graffiti and street artists are constantly creating new works. There were a bunch of folks milling about but it didn’t feel over crowded and it was fun to see the different ways folks were taking pictures and enjoying the art.

The other big anchor stop we did on Sunday was going to Centro, SP’s downtown. I have to say, this was a bit underwhelming. It felt quite a bit less well-kept vs. other areas in the city and was emptier and dirtier as well. I’m sure part of this is that this is a business district and we were there on a Sunday, but even after visiting a nice market (with some beautiful paintings by local artists, a couple of which I will be keeping on my list to buy from someday), I would say it wouldn’t be at the top of my list for me to return to on my next visit to SP.

I’m going to combine our Monday and Tuesday activities, as we took quite a bit of much-needed downtime on both days. We also continued our Kobra street art tour, seeing some pieces on purpose and some just by happenstance, but the most fun part of these two days was learning about the places and people that made SP home for Damian for over 15 years. We spent time with Damian’s closest childhood friend from gymnastics, plus his wife and kids, and with one of Damian’s parents’ closest friends from their time in Brasil. Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures of those, but the quality time did happen and it was super fun!

Finally, to round out this post where it started, below are pictures of Damian in the two places he lived in SP. The first is the apartment building his family lived in and the second is the house they lived in. It was so neat to see these and, especially with the house, imagine Damian and his siblings running around the neighborhood, jumping off ledges into the pool and enjoying everyday life in Brasil.

Overall, we had a really great time in SP! There were lots of little moments not captured fully in this recap – the super cute Casa Amarela store/museum/cafe, the delicious food at Baixo Pinheiros bar, the moment we almost walked onto the highway for our relentless pursuit of Kobra’s street art, the yummy gelato and so much more. I will say, having Damian as a native Portuguese speaker was critical to our (read: my) enjoyment of this city. Very few Brasilians speak English and without Damian to lead us it not only would have been more difficult but I would have felt less safe. And, it was so fun to see Damian immersed in his culture and history through language – I love finding new things to love about my husband!

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Read more about our time in Brazil using the links below:

• Brazil Country Recap – What we loved (and didn’t love) in our six weeks there
• Iguazu Falls
• Exploring São Paulo (you are here!)
• Exploring Bonito
• Touring in Bonito (river snorkeling and waterfall hiking)
• Rio de Janeiro: Our first three days in Rio
• Rio de Janeiro: “Professor-ial” thoughts on attending a game at Maracana
• Rio de Janeiro: Volunteering with Project Favela
• Three days in the beach paradies of Ubatuba!
• Rio de Janeiro: Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain
• The amazing landscape of Lençóis Maranhenses
• Three days in the hippie beach town of Jericoacoara
• Why we had to skip Canoa Quebrada and go to Natal instead
• Six days in Praia da Pipa (my favorite beach town)
• 24 hours in Olinda