Hey hey hey,
Hope that everyone hasn't frozen to death or become trapped in their houses due to the snow and lack of public transport! Quite entertaining reading all the news from this side of the world when it's nearly 40 degrees celsius... seriously though, hope everyone is ok.
I have had a brilliant time in Sao Paolo - surprisingly good - met a lovely Norwegian girl called Ana, and have spent all yesterday and today doing things around the city with her. It's quite tiring travelling around the city, because the distances are so far (17 million people live here or more), have to take the very clean and fast and efficient metro, however it does get slightly exhausting!
Tried to visit the Torre Tower to climb up to the 33rd floor for a view over the city yesterday, but couldn't find it so ended up going to the Pinocateca art museum instead. Saw brilliant exhibitions of Josef and Anni Albers, and a weird woman who went into the Amazon about 15 times to paint the flowers there and campaign against the forest's destruction. Saw some weird and not very inspirational Brazilian art, which was a shame. This had taken us hours and hours to do, and as it was pouring with rain, we decided to head back to the tower to see the city. Unfortunately it was closed so we headed back to the hostel. We had been wandering around the city and got picked up by 2 men in the cathedral (while a service was going on, very wrong I know!) and they wanted to buy us drinks. They recommended a coffee place to Ana and me - Ana is a barista - so we ditched them and went by ourselves in the evening. When we got there though and looked at the prices, we wished we'd telephoned them and arranged to meet them there!
Had a great time people watching, and then decided to grab some food. Unfortunately, it was raining again - when it rains it is cold, but when the sun comes out it is boiling! and unlike Argentina where people eat until about 1am, here the restaurants and shops seem to close by 9 or 9.30pm. We met the 3 Italian pilots on our hunt for food, and being good men they joined in too. We all got absolutely soaked, but the result was that they cooked us beautiful steaks in the hostel, we made the salad, and we had a very entertaining and boozy night last night... For some reason I cannot resist pilots!
Today we saw the Museo Arte Contemporareano (MAC - spelling something like that!) and the Museo de Arte Moderna (MAM). Took us about 90 minutes to get there with buses, traffic and getting lost, but we saw some fantastic exhibitions. Very impressed with MAM especially, both Ana and I loved looking around one of the exhibitions in particular. We headed back to the Torre Tower, and got in - the sun even came out. We looked for bikinis for a long time, but not found anything suitable yet, ie skimpy in the right places. When dodging the rain we stumbled across 2 more photography exhibitions, and 2 more public art exhibitions, plus lots of sculptures, so feeling kind of virtuous today!
Absolutely love Sao Paolo and feeling very cultural, albeit exhausted. My back is hurting like nothing else! I am leaving tomorrow morning early (not too early though), to Rio de Janeiro, and will stay in the Alpha hostel there (you can find it on www.hostelworld.com) until the 12th February, when I will take a 2 day bus to meet Hayley and J. So only one more hostel where I need to make friends before meeting the other two, and of course Beth and Ron will be there by that point which is great. Ron - I've been practising eating steaks for when you come over - they are absolutely beautiful. They are brilliant for both lunch and supper every day - haven't got tired of them yet!
So happily exhausted now, have made some lovely friends in this hostel (unfortunately though the pilots left this morning), and am very excited about seeing Rio, although I will miss this place and will be sad to say goodbye. The neighbourhood is very safe, friendly and has everything nearby. Plus the men here are extremely attractive!
On that note, will love you and leave you, but lots of love to all. Next update - Rio!
Love Alice xxxxxxx
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