We slept in, and decided the thing to do in Sampa was to shop in one of the many malls. We got directions to walk to "Shopping Higienopolis". São Paulo reminded me of Los Angeles, with is spread-out orientation and lack of pedestrians. But it was an interesting walk. In the mall, we had a great time at the Zoomp store. We became aware of this high-fashion Brazilian brand from one of Ivan's friends in Salvador. Then we had lunch at a typical Brazilian buffet, where you pay by the kilogram. After lunch we shopped until we dropped. A highlight was at the British cosmetics store "Lush", which was overstaffed like every store, but here all 5 of the male salespeople were gay, and the two youngest and cutest of them took a real interest in us - the first guy came up to help us, but didn't speak English, so he got his English- speaking friend to help us, and they both eagerly offered suggestion after suggestion. After seeing Geoff and I act affectionately together, they told us that the whole male staff was gay, and that they wanted to give us a special gift box. It was very sweet.

After taxiing to our hotel we walked to a restaurant that had been recommended - a mix of Bahian and Thai food. But of course, it had a very long wait, and we didn't want to wait (and miss our planned appointment with a guy we'd met on the beach in Rio). So we ended up at Koi, an excellent Japanese restaurant, which had some fun, unusual food. Then we met up with the local we'd met in Rio. Geoff was too tired to stay out late, so he went home while I hung out with this crowd of locals and went to "Level", a big club which everyone said was fantastic. I wasn't impressed, though. It was a slightly smaller version of New York's Roxy and other such big clubs, which aren't really my thing, and nothing made this distinctive to me. The people I was with were fun, though, and they knew lots of people. One of them in particular spoke no English or Spanish, and was worse than usual at understanding my Spanish, but was too friendly to give up. It was sweet but almost annoying. So finally I took a taxi to our hotel around 4am.

Sunday - metro to Pinacoteca, Metro to Paulista, Itáu Cultural Center, Market, taxi to airport.

Geoff- For our last day in Brazil, we decided to check out some art, and went to the Pinacoteca do Estado, which was an elegant 18th Century formal red brick building across from the old train station. Several of the galleries were closed so they didn't charge an entrance fee. The mix of art was extraordinary. We went there because of all the Sampa museums this one was the oldest and had the largest collection of Brazilian artists. The 20th century post-modern works were the best - vibrant colors with metaphors melting off the canvas.

Craig- Then we took the metro back to Avenida Paulista, which is like the Market St. of Sampa, and walked down it. We were struck with the number of buildings that had their own communication towers on top (big ones!) My guess was that this was due to capitalism without coordination and regulation. We stumbled upon the Itáu Cultural Center, which is owned by the Itáu bank, but had the most interesting contemporary art we've seen in a while. One room had all kinds of random, ordinary objects on different small tables, including some small loaves of bread. We saw some people eating bread, and we were hungry, so we asked a guard and found that the bread was there to eat (and it was good chalah!); we were simply supposed to replace its spot with something else of our choosing.

Geoff- That's when the items on the little tables started to make sense - gum wrappers, movie ticket stubs, sunglasses. Fascinating what people choose to leave behind as an indelible imprint of their presence manipulated by the artists. I loved it. Where the piece above was in an open space that took up the entire 2nd floor, the next two exhibits, which also encompassed entire floors, were mazes. In the first, the space was constricted by light pine wood floor to ceiling walling and plain wood cutouts of figures hung by strings attached to pullies above us. The figures conveyed the look of a crowd and the pullies moving them up and down conveyed motion and clutter. Along the walls were random facts about the planet: the population growth, the amount of common goods consumed, pollution statistics. Even though we couldn't understand the Portuguese the visual image was so strong that the artist was completely successful. At the back of the maze there was a room off the main path that you could see into through a glass wall. You could also walk into it. It looked like a very elegant cream and chrome modern dining room set for six. The chairs, napkin rings, lampshades and other items in the room were made of film strips of a tiny colorful image repeated over and over. Randomly placed throughout were magnifying glasses on strings so we could play detective. Using one I was horrified by the image of a bound and gagged half-naked bloody woman slumped in a chair. The room was decorated in death/murder. The third floor was also a maze, but here the walls were made up of newspapers piled on top of one another into a thick wall. At different turns the paths expanded and columns of newspaper stood in our way. Looking up we could see that televisions with "talking heads" in them were inside the columns and turned up at the ceiling which was all mirrored. So there I was staring up at myself and a news reporter both caught in a sea of newspapers. At other turns there were phones with instructions to call someone but the phones were made of wood. The whole way through the maze an eerie beautiful music sirened on off keys without resolution. Finally, at the back of the room we came to piles and piles of brown paper pages attached together. Others ahead of us were going through reading the pages, and taking a few to keep - this is how we knew to do this ourselves. The pages in each column were all the same, although each column was from a different famous work - The Odyssey or Finnegan's Wake, etc. After picking up a page we entered a "reading room" where the music was clearly by the same artist but was absolutely magical and clear, inspiring. We rested our minds here and took it all in. I don't think I have every found an installation piece so moving, thought-provoking or beautiful.

Despite the threat of rain and our shortage on time we walked back to the hotel from the museum.

Craig- We didn't have time to go into the city's modern art museum, but we enjoyed the open-air market around it, and took this photo of the famous building:

Geoff- General Impressions:

1. They grow everything big in Brazil - Each place we went to felt like an overgrown garden: Rio grows men, Mountains and beaches, each larger than the last; Salvador grows women in large white dresses and music and dance bursting at every turn; Iguassu grows waterfalls more beautiful and numerous then anywhere on the planet; Sao Paulo grows 15 story buildings and malls.
2. Sao Paulo was the only place people really spoke English.
3. Employment - everywhere we went there was an excess of employees, if one could do the job they would have four. In the tiny shoe store we shopped in there were 9 people working and we were the only customers.
4. Clubs - Brazilians know how to party but we frankly found the music to be consistently too loud, and it is not because we are getting older, and everyone seemed to smoke in the clubs. The only saving grace was the attractiveness of the men which made dancing worthwhile.
5. Distribution - We found the same brands throughout the country and advertising was nationally unified. We expected more regionalization.
6. Shoe stores - every corner seemed to house another shoe store, but god knows how they survive because everyone wore flip-flops (even on the steep cobble-stone hillsides of Salvador). However, they must replace them often because they love to drag their feet and scrape their feet.
7. People - of all the gay people we met not a single one is out of the closet; there was a strong racial divide and level of racism we could not understand; many people had been to the USA but all before the Real devalued a few years ago; very few people spoke Spanish.