South America- Day 31- Sao Paulo/ Home!

Cannot get over that it is our last day on our incredible trip! We fly out a little after 9 tonight, so we luckily had some time today to continue exploring Sao Paulo.  We packed up and checked out, then headed to the Ibirapuera Park in the middle of the city. Noted as being the city's version of Central Park, it is a beautiful spot to walk around but didn't feel as big as we expected. There is a terrific lake in the middle, filled with swans and ducks, and there is plenty of shade on the pathways that helped shelter us a bit from the sun (the trees there also have some of the craziest root systems we've ever seen).

We wandered around here for a while, then walked through the surrounding neighborhood, seeking out the MUBE, which is a small modern art museum we read about on CNN.  The walk itself was nice though the museum was very small. There was one exhibition, one under construction, and the outdoor sculptures; the space was cool as well, but definitely didn't take us long to complete. It's actually right next door to another museum that is based on audio and visual components, and it turns out there is a cafe near that one, so we ended up eating there. Surprisingly cool and chic crowd, which was a nice surprise!

Unfortunately I woke up this morning feeling a little off and as the day progressed, kept feeling worse. Hoping it was just allergies we kept walking for a little while longer and hit the nice shopping district on Oscar Freire. Wasn't really up for much, but we did walk the strip and I picked up a pair of Havianas as a last token from Brazil. We ended up going back to the hotel after this and resting for about an hour before changing and grabbing our cab to the airport.

The traffic in SP is absolutely insane and even though the airport is not that many kilometers, we had heard horror stories so we left two hours to get to the airport. An hour and 45 minutes later, we were very glad we did! Lower stress level all around! Our flight actually ended up being late since the plane was stuck at a remote section of the airport, or some such nonsense. They made us switch gates and there was overall mayhem, but the good news is that it eventually worked out and they bussed us to the plane and then we were off on the nine hour flight home to the US.  Newark to Dulles and then arrived back home!! What an absolutely once-in-a-lifetime trip!

South America- Day 30- Sao Paulo- "Mane y Mani"

Day got off to a good start with breakfast that included some planning, watermelon juice, and running into someone he knew from Booth! When we got going, we headed first to the Paulista Avenue area which is a major boulevard and the home of many banking and financial institutions. It's just about 3km long and I read somewhere that about eight hundred thousand people commute there daily. It's honestly not that exciting, but we did stop by a bookstore called Liviria Cultura that is the largest bookstore chain in Brazil and started in SP in the 1950s. We also swung by a park that was really nice and went into the MASP as well.

They had a great collection of sculpture on display based around different themes as well as some great paintings on the 2nd floor. Their assortment included works by Money, Manet, Renoir, and Degas in addition to many others and coupled with the nice space and flow, it was a really great museum. We continued the walk up the avenue to the Casa dos Rosas then jumped into a cab to get lunch.

The Mercado Municipal is one of the sights to see in the city. It's not in a super gentrified area but is a really nice market with tons of stalls. These contain everything from cheese to meat to fish to fruit to spices to sweets to beer to pasta and so on. Our initial mission was to try the famous mortadella sandwich, in particular from Bar Mane. Apparently there are a lot of Italian immigrants here, though it still seems a random sandwich to be famous for! It's very large (katzs deli style) and was kind of like a shaved hot dog;) 

We spent some time walking around for a little bit looking at the unusual fruit, then came back to the hotel. It seems that the city is so large and set up in such a haphazard manner that the cabbies need to use gps to find their way! Took a swim in the pool, cleaned up and headed to our goodbye south america dinner at Mani, again in the Jardins area. Absolutely incredible dinner, ranks as some of the best food we've ever had I think. Headed to Sky Bar at the Hotel Unique after with views of the city for a farewell drink. Trying to be a little too cool, but seeing the numerous radio towers lit up in a multitude of colors was pretty neat and a great way to spend the last night of our adventure. A little more site seeing then we fly home tomorrow on the red eye!