Introduction: Sao Paulo Visit
Sao Paulo is the most populated city in Brazil, the western hemisphere and the southern one. It stands at the 12th most populated city in the world with more than 30 million inhabitants.
As a huge and modern metropolis, Sao Paulo is not a really visited city and is most known for restaurants, bars and nightlife. Often traveller use it as a entering point to south America but don’t stay.
Yet we decided to take one day and explore it.
Ibirapuera Park
We started our day by a good breakfast in our guesthouse before calling an Uber to get to Ibirapuera Park. One if not the biggest park of Sau Paulo. It is like the central park of NYC. It has 158 hectares and offer small forest, greeneries to the habitants of the city.
We arrived at 9am there after 20min ride. We hang around for a good one hour and discovered this beautiful park where people would come to run, walk, do yoga, train boxing or just get out of the stress from the metropolis.
There was a huge water plan in the park with black swan swimming around and lots of fish in it but also nice walking area to stroll around and places to just lay down and rest.
Paulista Avenue
From there Ibirapuera park, we walked straight up to reach the Paulista avenue which is the main street of the city. It is the Champs Champs-Élysées of Sao Paulo. It was a 40min walk to arrive at the main street. Along the way we made a small stop in a local supermarket to get some snack. That supermarket was really great and was offering a small cake buffet to trial them and had a small area where you could order food and eat.
We walked up the Paulista Avenue which was full of shopping mall and commercial building.
Edifico Italia
At the end of the Paulista avenue, we took the metro to Republica station (2 stops) in order to visit the Edifico Italia. A skyscraper that has a rooftop bar and a view of the city.
Unfortunately, it would only open from 3 to 7pm this day and would be closed tomorrow.
As it was noon, we decided to just go on.
Historical center
So, we went back to the metro station and took another 2 stops to reach Se, the historical center of the city. Out of the metro station is located the cathedral. It is a nice monument where a ceremony was taking place. It was built between 1913 and 1954.
Then, we just stroll around the historical city center untll we reach the market. This part of town wasn’t really attractive at all and was super crowded. It was really hard to move around. This part of town was also quite smelly and really not clean at all compared to the Paulista avenue.
Market
We wanted to try the local sandwich of Sao Paulo in the market but even though there was lots of place selling it was impossible to get one. There were people lining up for food everywhere. Well it was also 1:30pm and was certainly not the best time.
The market has a second floor that have restaurant where you can sit. But the best if that it offers you a great view of the market and its life.
Later on we decided to take back a uber and chill in our guesthouse.
Conclusion
Sao Paulo was cool to visit but only for a day, we would not have stayed longer. The park was just amazing but the city center not the best.
Where to Stay in Sao Paulo
Your accommodation in Sao Paulo is really important, so here is where we stayed:
“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” – Anonymous
