Brazil diary: Like real tourists

Day 14

Thursday. The last day of good weather here in Sao Paulo before we leave for our 2 week trip through Brazil. And tomorrow, Karl is coming over to join me/us. On the agenda today was: taking the bus to the city center, visiting everything on our way that looks interesting and visiting the things we listed up before. First, we finally went inside the church we've been spotting from the outside for some times already. Then, we passed by and observed the art museum from the outside and looked over the panorama while standing on some sort of bridge. We headed out for the city centre again, spotting the Teatro Municipal de Sao Paulo, eager to know whats inside, we subscribed to do an inside tour with a guide. A portuguese guide unfortunately for me but that didn't stop me from enjoying the tour. The inside was even more wonderful that the outside. As a big fan of vintage and stuff from the Roman empire, I fell in love with this building. But I guess everyone does when entering this building...  After a 1,5-2h tour through the Theater we left, trying to find a date to come and see a ballet show here but no chance...  After some walking we arrived at the Banespo building. We spotted only a small line of people who wanted to get up the building so we took our chance and waited in line to climb the 26 floors (by elevator) and 5 floors by stairs to end up at the very top of the building. We had a wonderful view! The only thing I really hated was the thick line of pollution floating over the city. We were only allowed to be up there for 5 minutes, so it was a very short but very cool visit. As we walked further, we continued our trip with a visit to the Plaça da Sé with the Catedral da Sé in the middle of it. Not only is this a sweet entrance to the church, but also a place for homeless people to meet up, ask for food or money or sell stuff among each other or to other people. Mostly self made, other things stolen,... Our last stop was The Collégio. A Church in the direct middle of the city, the place where Sao Paulo started. On this place, with this church, SP grew out into the city it is today. Sadly enough, we couldn't visit the museum because it was closed but we took a small look from the outside to the inside and we had seen enough. A very small exhibition but with a very big impact. And so our tour ended with a ride home by subway. 
Amy