Beyonce

She was awesome!!! Amazing costume changes, great songs, and an all female band and dancers apart from two. As the band came on and you could hear the music starting you could feel her transformation into Sascha Fierce!

Interesting how the crazy fan has made this concert rather famous! It happened very quickly but unless you were watching you wouldn't have noticed-Beyonce kept singing and was so calm.

The concert was at Morumbi stadium. We turned up four hours early to sort our tickets.....there were already thousands and thousands of people queueing. It was crazy. It took us twenty minutes to walk to the end of a queue (only to find out it was the wrong one ha!). The world cup is gonna be interesting!

Paulista Avenue

We started off today with a lil wander through Liberdade, the Japanese quarter. There was a cool lil open air market and then loads of food stalls for some lovely Asian food. It is getting seriously hot though...and is is still officially winter. Oh man!

Enough eating, it was time to get back to sightseeing! After really enjoying the old downtown tour, we went on the modern downtown walking tour. It was around Paulista avenue, the most expensive real estate in Latin America.

Wow, just when you feel like you are ticking things off your to see list, you get a load more! It is good to learn more about the city and how bits fit together, as well as some history. The architecture is so varied. We saw some amazingly interesting and funky buildings. Enjoy!

Renaissance Hotel

One of many TV towers!

MASP - three floors below, two above so no interruption of the view for the street behind! A city landmark-one block of concrete supported by 4 towers. Dedicated by our queen!

The bridge is part of the fire escape!

It is actually a mosaic!

Sao Paulo's biggest graffiti art

Did it!

Finally went for a run in the park!! Thank goodness for GPS-helped me get there and back...how I wish I had a sense of direction....

Island trip

Happiness on the beach!

To celebrate our first pay day and a month in Brazil, we went on a trip to the beach. It has been an incredibly busy and at times, rather challenging month so we were all exhausted, fighting colds, and desperate to get out of the city and see a bit of Brazil!

Seven years ago, on a flight to Madrid, I met Rhen. We hung out in Madrid, hugged trees and explored the city for the time I was there.

Retiro Park, Madrid 2007!

Well, Rhen now lives in Portugal, but is from Sao Paulo and has hooked me up with his cousin, Paula. She invited me and my friends to join a group of her friends on Ilha Bela, an island 2.4km from the mainland in Sao Paulo state. Love how friendship networks work! She is so so sweet and friendly, really like her.

It was a long and eventful journey sorting hire cars, joining the long convoy of cars that was our group, getting lost (actually nothing to do with me, I was snoozing in the back!)...we arrived at 3.30am and in true Brazilian style went straight for food and drinks (us Brits were not best impressed, but worked through it hehe). A couple of caipirinhas later and we were all ready to sleep, though when Emma and I were finally shown our room we went straight back to sit at the pool and watch the sunrise! 

The island is stunning. It was an amazing introduction to the Brazilian coastline, though I miss the warm Indian ocean greatly, I had forgotten how cold the Atlantic is!
 

View from our hotel

Hello Brazil!

I am not yet in the Brazilian swing of things. After a day on the beach, where Emma and I spent most of the day fast asleep, we decided to all nap early eve till meeting at half 9 for dinner. Emma and I set our alarm for 9, got up and all made up and then rather cold.....I had the genius idea that waiting in bed for the others to get ready was a great plan as we would stay warm (the boys' timekeeping leaves a lot to be desired too, we thought we may well be in for a wait)....hmmm....we woke up at 8 the next morning! We both really needed the sleep, and after a lil outing to buy coffee and brekkie were properly forgiven!

Sao Paulo besties :) The group of Gringos with Paula

Sunset

Park Life

One of the (many) great things about where we live here is our proximity to a huge city park (one of Latin America's largest). There was a jazz festival on last week so we spent some chilled out time there on Sunday afternoon. It does get really busy, but is at the moment, the place where I feel most that I am in Brazil. There are museums in it, skating areas, dressed up dogs galore and a massive range of recreational activities going on.....most very unusual as a gringo! Emma and I had a lil wander before the festival to take a few more pics as it was such a gorgeous day.

Never far from a skyscraper or two in Sao Paulo!

Nice bit of reflection going on!

Monumento as Bandeiras

Helicopters and sandwiches

Sao Paulo has one of the highest per capital ownerships of helicopters in the world. It is quite cool seeing them flying about, and makes a nice change from the constant planes that come with living on a flight path hehe

Last weekend we ventured downtown again to see a few more sights. We began at the central station that has been modeled on Big Ben...not quite got the beauty of it but you can see similarities.

Luz station

We then headed over to the Municipal Market as I have been rather obsessed with seeing their sandwiches as they sounded epic....they didn't disappoint! I wimped out of eating one of the house specials though, but was very happy to take pics!

So many goodies!

Paul and Luke rather impressively fit them in their mouths!

Best lunch ever! I had a small chicken one....

Love the fruits here

On our walking tour last week we heard about a few tall buildings with good viewing platforms. We naively thought it would give us  more of a sense of direction and help our bearings of the city. Hmmm it just showed us how massive this place is and how we will never have our bearings!!!

We went up the Italian building, the third largest in the city. It was amazing. Helicopters flew all around it, and the pilots in the white one below actually waved at us! Insane! We decided to stay till after dusk and see the city all lit up. It is so impressive.