Avenida Paulista

Welcome to the Thomason's tour of Avenida Paulista :)

 This here is where we got off the bus. Last Saturday when we went, we rode one of those double-bus gizmos, where the bus has an accordion style contraption in the middle, making it extra long (are you getting the visual?) Anyway, Todd and I ended up in the accordion and it was very swingy and wobbly...almost makes you carsick! Anyway, it was our first adventure on a bus by ourselves, but we made it! Avenida Paulista is where most of the banks and offices of Sao Paulo are located. It wasn't quite as busy on a Saturday, but there were still a LOT of people there!

 We think they're telephone booths look like little pods (and yes, Todd did sanitize after touching the phone!)

 This was an old church. It didn't look like it was being used for anything anymore.

 The museum of art. It is a famous landmark in Sao Paulo, mostly because of its design. You can kind of see that it "floats." It stands on those red concrete pillars, and you line up to buy tickets underneath. We didn't go through the museum.

 This is parque trianon. It's one of the small parks in Sao Paulo, and was quite jungle-like. There were all kinds of...interesting...people there. I won't get into details, but they all looked quite happy :)

 A statue of a bandeiro. Bandeiros are all over the history of Sao Paulo.

 A building that looks like it houses one of the newspapers of SP.

 Looking down the street. A. Paulista is about 6-8 lanes across, so its very busy.

 I think this is a bank. We really liked the statues and the landscaping out front.

 A sign marking where we are. PHEW! We're still on the right street! We enjoyed a lunch of fries, juice, and a Brazil-style hamburger. It tasted a lot like those bulk hamburgers you get in the frozen section...not great, but  not gross either. A big improvement on a Guatemalan hamburger! We also sampled some delicious ice cream.

This is another cool building we saw. It looks like it gets thinner as it gets higher because of the perspective and how tall it is. But if you look closely, the bottom floor has five windows, and every floor after that has the same number of windows (4) that are the same size.

We had heard how this was supposed to be this huge bookstore that was really cool. 

 It did have a fun seating area where they were playing the movie "Rio." (They are selling Rio all OVER the place here, they love the Brazil love!)

However, maybe because we are Americans and we are used to Barnes and Noble, or because we are used to getting books for cheap at the thrift store or online...either way, we experience quite the sticker shock here. Right now, I can get Pride and Prejudice for free on my Itouch, and you can probably get it for 2-5 bucks in the states. Well, if you want your Jane Austen in Portuguese, you will have to shell out 25 reals, or about $18. That doesn't just apply to translated books either...if you wanted any book, whether it was old or new, originally in Portuguese or not, it seemed like the average price was 20-40 reals. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I've ever paid the list price for a book, and there were no bargain sections in this store. We were looking forward to getting some books in Portuguese, but we may have to check out Amazon instead. Another reason I'm grateful for America. We did talk to some locals, and they said you can find books easily at used bookstores, you just have to know where they are :)

Anyway, we still had a good day on Avenida Paulista!