São Paulo

As I mentioned before in the previous post, São Paulo is my favorite city in Brazil, part because it is the place I am from, part because this huge city is full of things to do and to visit. Let's check some numbers about São Paulo. It is a city with 12 million people, the biggest city in the southern hemisphere, and the 10th biggest one in the world. In addition, São Paulo is the second city in number of helicopters and in a variety of gastronomy. We sometimes refer to São Paulo as the New York City of Brazil.

São Paulo City

Even though Brazil has a lot of culture to see and to taste, São Paulo has a little bit of everything, a little piece of every country, the most popular ones are Arabian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and Italian food. Some of them have their own neighborhood. Bairro do Bexiga is an Italian neighbor-hood, and Bairro da Liberdade is a Japanese one. However, São Paulo does not have a specific food or a strong culture, due to some many cultures together. The most popular food there is Pizza, but it is a really good pizza. I did not find a better one here in the US yet. Only São Paulo City sells one million pizzas everyday, you heard it right one million pizzas are sold every single day. My favorite one is pizza de frango com catupiry (Chicken with a sort of cheese we have in Brazil).

Pizza de frango com catupiry

 The variety of food is one of the best things about this huge city, which also have lots of museums, parks, historical places, and things to go or to do. On the other hand, with this much people it is expected that everywhere you go there are a lot of people and the traffic is really bad. In case of São Paulo the traffic gets even worse because of the many motorcycles that ride between the cars. They run fast in "their own lane"even when the traffic is slow and this result in many accidents, in fact, there is one accident per hour with motorcycles and one motorcyclist dies everyday due to an accident in São Paulo. See picture below to understand where is the lane they invented.

Traffic in São Paulo

Going back to the museums and parks, the most popular ones are the Museu do Ipiranga (where Dom Pedro I declared the independence of Brazil from Portugal in September 07, 1822). Museu do MASP, it is an Art Museum who call people's attention by its unique architecture style. As far as parks the most popular ones are Parque Villa Lobos, and Parque do Ibirapuera. In this last one, it has an enormous Christmas tree every year, and  a water show in its big lake everyday.
São Paulo is the city who receives more tourists in Brazil, but most of them go there because of its many companies, so they go to do business, not for leisure like in Rio. No matter what are your plans if you are going to São Paulo, it is definitely a city you are going to like.

Ibirapuera Park