Sao Paulo Bazil

View of Sao Paulo from the tallest building.

Sao Paulo is one of the biggest cities in Brazil. If you include the suburbs it is a whopping 25 million people, that rivals Beijing! It is also one of the dirtiest cities that I have been to.

The streets of Sao Paulo

We were in Sao Paulo for five days, the first day we got there it was the end of Carnival so we thought we would go and see the town in full swing. Oh no, we were so wrong. When we stepped out of the subway it was utterly quite. We walked for two blocks to find a place to eat and saw only 15 people! We learned later that the end of Carnival is one of the quietest days in Sao Paulo because everyone drank to much the night before!

When we sat down to eat at one of Sao Paulo's many famous diners, immediately two people came up to us and asked us for money for beer in Portuguese. At first we could not figure out what he was saying, but when he started to point to the beer bottle we said "no comprendo" and then he finally walked away. In all of our travels we saw more drunks and beggars than ever before.

The rest of the days it was the same way, beggars would come up to us, we would be walking in trash and there would be a huge line of police cars screaming down the road. We also saw that all of the buildings had graffiti almost all the way up, and most of the old 18th century buildings were decrepit and were in shambles. Even on the super fancy side of town the buildings had graffiti and old radio towers that make it look like a Communist city from the sixties. It is really sad to see all of the buildings, old and new in shambles and about ready to fall down. I really wish that the government would pay the money to fix the old buildings and save a piece of history (that is what Beunos Aries is doing).

Over all I didn't care for Sao Paulo. I mostly didn't like it because of the dirtiness. Every day we would walk down the street and step in something. I am sure that the rest of Brazil is nice, but for Sao Paulo, it will never be my favorite place.

Praca de Se and the Cathedral of Sao Paulo.
Here we saw many everyday citizens attract a crowd to listen to their preaching.

The back side of the Cathedral.