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!