São Paulo is rather like Brazil's London: a huge, cosmopolitan, financial city (actually huger) but with lots of green spaces, lively locals, and lots of places to eat and drink relatively cheaply. Spending a few days in this sophisticated, 21st-century metropolis is quite a change from the cheap'n'cheerful 'South America'. Anyway, I spent this morning nosing around the district of Vila Madalena, famous for its street art. People illustrate their houses (pic)...
...and other people's (pic), but nobody seems to mind. It's all rather chaotic but good-natured, like a lot of Brazil. A feature of São Paulo I very much like is that everyone wanders round in shorts and t-shirts or summer frocks. Even the business people in suits don't wear suits. It's like everyone's on holiday. It gives the place an informal, friendly look. Also, I feel at home at last: I don't stand out as a tourist. In fact, I was asked for directions twice today. In Portuguese, so of course I couldn't reply.
I also wandered round the Old Town, including the lovely Central Market, with its fabulous fruit stalls (pic). You can get freshly-squeezed tropical fruit smoothies here for half the price they in Britain. Except it costs you six hundred quid to fly here, so you'd have to drink ever such a lot to break even. I'm giving it a go, though.
The food stalls in the market are famous for their mortadella: ham sandwiches (pic) in what we might call 'deep fill' in England. The only way you could eat one of these without staining your trousers would be if you were one of those snakes that can detach their jaws from each other so they can eat deer whole.
In the afternoon I went up the Martinelli Building, São Paulo's first skyscraper, which has fine views (pic) from the top of all the other three zillion skyscrapers that they've built since. This is a high-rise city, but the people seem very down to earth; I rather like it.
Excellent. Told you you'd like SP.
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