“Skip São Paulo. It’s just a concrete jungle. Nothing to see there,” was the advice I received while planning a trip to Brazil.
Nonsense.
We are big city people. We love architecture, museums, and restaurants. Big cities have this never-ending energy and are always full of activities and things to do. How can we miss the most populous city in South America? Of course, we are going to São Paulo.
And so, we chose to fly in and out of São Paulo and bookended our two-week trip to Brazil with the first two days and the last day to be spent in the “concrete jungle”.
And then, we got there.
Hmmm….
Arriving on December 24, São Paulo met us with a grey sky and unpleasant drizzle. The city was empty, gloomy, and uninvitingly cold. Walking through the center, we couldn’t believe our eyes. The buildings looked disheveled, their walls covered in ugly graffiti. Although some street art was creative, most graffiti were random -- paint scribbles and gang signs --defacing businesses, museums, and even churches.
The main thoroughfare, Paulista Avenue, was a miserable version of New York City’s 5th Avenue from a dystopian future. It was dirty and unappealing. The financial center was a ghost town, only garbage strewn around the street. In an online post or a guidebook, I read that near the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), you can meet “people from different walks of life.” When we approached the building, we understood what the phrase meant in plain English: the place was full of homeless and mentally ill people, and it smelled of urine. Ugh…
By the Museum of the Portuguese Language, drug addicts were doing drugs and prostitutes were soliciting clients in the broad daylight. And to create a fitting backdrop for these shady street activities, the museum walls were charred from the fire that occurred several days earlier.
Why did we come here? We were warned, weren’t we?
But things got even worse. As our bank had notified us before the trip, Brazil was blacklisted for widespread fraudulent activities, and our bank cards didn’t work. We had to run around the city assaulting multiple ATMs, calling the bank, and pleading with them to do anything to “unlock” the cards. Somehow, we managed to get cash out of Santander Bank ATM, but the experience left us traumatized. That’s not how you want to spend the first 24 hours in a new country.
Due to holidays, museums, businesses, and most restaurants were closed. All we could buy with our hard-fought cash was some oversalted fish empanadas and dinner from the only hole-in-the-wall restaurant that was open on December 25.
The first impressions of São Paulo were less than flattering. The only positive memory was staying in the iconic “wave” building designed by Oscar Niemeyer. The building was probably one of the coolest Airbnbs we’ve ever stayed in. We watched sunsets from our tiny studio and marveled at the sun beautifully dipping into the never-ending concrete forest. Several years after our visit, Colombian heartthrob singer Maluma made the building even more famous, recording one of his most successful music videos on the rooftop of the building. Maluma’s sweet voice spread over the city: “Tuuuu me partiste el corazoooooon” and got more than a billion views on YouTube.
We left the city after two days. As we headed to the airport, we just hoped that Rio de Janeiro, Salvador de Bahia, Minas Gerais, and other places on our itinerary were better. And they absolutely were! By the time we returned to São Paulo to fly back home, we were in love with Brazil and didn’t really care if our last day in São Paulo was going to be…meh.
And then the unexpected happened – we loved São Paulo!
Maybe our initial impressions about the city were just wrong. Maybe it was a mistake to visit it during the holidays and deal with the closures. Maybe it was something else. But the last day was incredible. We have got to experience the megacity and the best it offers.
The city center was in much better shape this time around. With the sun shining, paulistanos were out and about, and the same streets and buildings that looked gloomy and depressing at the beginning of the trip now looked much livelier.
The museums were finally open, and we managed to cram three of them into one long day. Pinacoteca de São Paulo had a fascinating collection of Brazilian art, while São Paulo Museum of Art boasted probably the best collection of European art we ever encountered in South America. And the Museum of Football at Estádio Municipal was just icing on the cake. It added nicely to our earlier tour of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Maracana Stadium. Where do you visit a soccer museum as if not in this soccer-obsessed country?
And finally, the food. São Paulo’s dining scene is extraordinary, and the city has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in South America. Some places even make the list of the best restaurants in the world. Our last meal in Brazil was in Famiglia Mancini Trattoria, and it was the best Italian food I’ve ever tried. No exaggeration here, real talk. True, I haven’t been to Italy yet, but I now wonder how the Italian food in Italy would measure up against our family-style dinner at Famiglia Mancini on our last day in São Paulo.
We hated São Paulo at first and loved it at last. The city doesn’t leave you indifferent or without an opinion about it. For some people, it is an easy “skip” and “nothing to see there” kind of place. We have no concrete evidence that you’ll fall in love with the concrete jungle. You may well hate it after all. But we are glad we stuck around and gave it another chance.
