Sao Paulo is not the most attractive of cities at first glance, it is busy, dirty, noisy and built without any form of organised town planning. The scale of it though is amazing with enough skyscrapers and high-rises to fill 5 Manhattans. Nearly 22 million people live in the metropolitan sprawl. Leaving the city by coach on a fast moving motorway took the best part of an hour. Whilst much of the architecture is grey, drab and rundown, dotted about the city in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, are many interesting buildings, old and new, and some very ambitious architecture. Much of our time around the built-up, modern south of the centre was spent gawping upwards.
Despite the size of the city and the short time we spent here, we managed to thoroughly explore the relatively compact centre and get excited about just a few of the things in the arts scene.Paulistas, as people from Sao Paulo are known, are proud of being the centre for cultural events - theatre, music, arts and fashion.
As we walked around the busy, pedestrianised streets of the centre we were struck by the business bustle of the place and the number of homeless people, living under tarpaulins or simply on cardboard beds in squares and streets. Brazil is famous for its rich/poor divide and nowhere is this more apparent than Sao Paulo, where many of the rich fly in helicopters between tower blocks and thousands of homeless people struggle to survive on the streets.
Sao Paulo is a fascinating city to visit and we're really glad we came here. From its architecture, to its cultural scene, to its opportunity for people watching, it's the kind of city where the more time you spend here, the more you discover and the more there is to like.
Sao Paulo is not the most attractive of cities at first glance, it is busy, dirty, noisy and built without any form of organised town planning. The scale of it though is amazing with enough skyscrapers and high-rises to fill 5 Manhattans. Nearly 22 million people live in the metropolitan sprawl. Leaving the city by coach on a fast moving motorway took the best part of an hour. Whilst much of the architecture is grey, drab and rundown, dotted about the city in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, are many interesting buildings, old and new, and some very ambitious architecture. Much of our time around the built-up, modern south of the centre was spent gawping upwards.
Despite the size of the city and the short time we spent here, we managed to thoroughly explore the relatively compact centre and get excited about just a few of the things in the arts scene.Paulistas, as people from Sao Paulo are known, are proud of being the centre for cultural events - theatre, music, arts and fashion. 
As we walked around the busy, pedestrianised streets of the centre we were struck by the business bustle of the place and the number of homeless people, living under tarpaulins or simply on cardboard beds in squares and streets. Brazil is famous for its rich/poor divide and nowhere is this more apparent than Sao Paulo, where many of the rich fly in helicopters between tower blocks and thousands of homeless people struggle to survive on the streets.
Sao Paulo is a fascinating city to visit and we're really glad we came here. From its architecture, to its cultural scene, to its opportunity for people watching, it's the kind of city where the more time you spend here, the more you discover and the more there is to like.
No comments:
Post a Comment