I´m home in Goiânia again for a couple weeks after spending a long weekend in São Paulo with Dante.  It was a wonderful weekend, and I plan to visit him once a month for the rest of the time I´m here. 

I took an executiva overnight bus to São Paulo.  This was infinitely better than the normal buses I took last month because they have water and coffee on the bus and more legroom.  I actually got a good night´s sleep both ways.  I had 3 suitcases of things for Dante, so this was the most luggage I´ve EVER had on a trip.  Between Dante, his roommate Luis, and I, we managed it all well! 

I learned how to use the metro in São Paulo - it´s a large subway system with about 5 or 6 different lines.  Dante lives a few blocks from the blue line, so we used the metro to go everywhere.  It´s clean and safe, and reminded me of the subways in Seoul, Tokyo, and Boston.  I´ll be able to use it alone on my next visit.  I found gold shoes to match my formal dress for Lenora´s graduation ball at a mall located adjacent to the subway and we saw a depressing Julia Roberts movie about relationships at the same mall. 

Dante is a great cook, and we had a few meals at home, but we also tried some different restaurants close to home and in other neighborhoods.  I learned that prices are a lot cheaper in Goiânia though!  We went to Liberdade, an oriental neighborhood near downtown São Paulo.  There are more Japanese people living here than any other area of the world other than Japan.  The first Japanese people settled here more than a hundred years ago, but the neighborhood has been revitalized along the lines of Chinatown in San Francisco.  We had a great time exploring, and we both remembered doing this at Chicago´s Chinatown with my family. 

We spent most of one day at a large park called Ibirupuera.  It´s a huge park close to downtown with recreation areas, museums, sculpture, and interesting architecture.  We spent a lot of time in MAM, the museum of modern art, but we also walked the entire park.  The Niemeyer Orc reminded me a little of the bean at Chicago´s Millenium Park. 

Our grand adventure, though, was Carnaval.  I picked this weekend to come to São Paulo because I wanted to experience a little of Carnaval.  São Paulo has samba schools that are as good as those in Rio, even though the ones in Rio are better known to visitors from other countries.  Dante doesn´t like samba or the whole Carnaval scene, but he enthusiastically agreed to accompany me for one night at Sambódromo.  We knew that the cheaper tickets were all sold out before we even left home, so we were keeping an open mind about what was going to happen once we got there.  I took 100 reais, thinking it would easily cover our costs, because I don´t like to walk around with a lot of money.  We left home about 9 PM.

We took the metro to the station closest to the Sambódromo and then a taxi from there for 15 reais.  We agreed that it would be best to take a taxi home because the atmosphere in the metro was a lot different than during the day.  We ended up buying tickets from a scalper for 80 reais, leaving us with 5 reais.  Unfortunately there was not an ATM machine in sight! 

Each samba school takes about an hour, and the event was scheduled to continue until about 5 AM.  We decided that we should either watch just one school or plan to spend the entire night because of our financial situation at that point.  We certainly didn´t want to be figuring out how to get home with no money at 2 or 3 AM!  There is a leader of each school in a fantastic costume, then floats and support dancers, more groups in costumes of several different matching colors, and finally the musicians.  The school we watched had an Egyptian theme, and it was great.  Everyone in the stands was singing, dancing, and partying.  We had a great time.  I took lots of photos, as well as film.

We left about 11 PM and starting walking to the closest metro station, but we hopped on a bus with our remaining money after we got nervous in one of the neighborhoods.  As we walked, we kept stopping to ask police if it was still safe, but after we crossed an empty praça, we decided that it would be wise to take a bus.  We managed to arrive at the metro station before it stopped running for the night, and then walked home from Dante´s house.  We agreed that we had broken all the rules on this night, and we were lucky that we didn´t get into trouble.  I wouldn´t dream of doing something like this in New York, which is a much smaller and safer city than São Paulo!  But everything worked out, we had a great time, and we arrived home safely!  I hope to write about much tamer experiences in the future, but now I have experienced Carnaval!

My next experience will be Lenora´s graduation in Physical Therapy in a couple hours, and the grand ball on Saturday night.  After that, ?????