Transcontinental

A very long day indeed... Started on the flight, of course, somewhere off the Brittany coast and ended in the hotel in my destination which is.... São Paulo! Brazil has never been on my wish list, but as I had to come for work, I thought, "oh well, I might as well". No Mr A, of course, but I'll make the best of it.

In the circumstances, the travelling was very smooth. The direct flight from LHR to São Paulo is less than 11 hours, and it was one hour from landing to being in the taxi heading in to the city. Long walks, of course, and a bit of a queue for immigration, but nothing too epic, and my time at the immigration desk was concluded with a cheery "welcome to Brazil" from the immigration officer. Nice!

I'm staying downtown (well, the hotel called out the "new downtown" but to Bb it's "Jardims Paulista") and in a modern chain hotel (InterContinental). Having checked in with Dd and Bb last weekend, I had ascertained that there are decent walks to be had from here in a manner that is safe, at least during the day. The hotel also has a swimming pool (which I have briefly used) and a gym (which I intend to use on Sunday). Yesterday I just walked up the Avenida Paulista, which was obviously thronging with cars, but which is apparently car free on a Sunday. Looking forward to that. I got as far as MASP (Museum of Art of São Paulo; second extra), but it wasn't open and I didn't want to hang around. I checked out the Trianon Park next door (see third extra), which is interesting because you realise that at this latitude we are basically sub tropical. There were all sorts of bird calls going on in the trees that sounded very exotic.


The weather is glorious. Full sun and 25 degrees during the day. Cool at night. Midwinter! My flight in was full, mainly of people returning to Latin America from the UK, with lots of families and large piles of luggage. That didn't affect me, as I came hand luggage only.


I was able to get access to my room around 10am, so the rest of the day was fairly quiet. I did sleep a fair bit in the afternoon, which meant I was operating on a fair number of cylinders for the informal welcome dinner in a different part of São Paulo. I know it's one of the world's great (and largest) cities, but I honestly had no idea about it before I arrived, apart from brief conversations with Bb and Dd, and my colleague RJW who comes here regularly and was here for a few months earlier this year, so I'm looking forward to discovering more. I asked someone yesterday why the city had grown so large so quickly, and a large part of it seemed to be to do with the energy of the large immigrant communities here. They have the largest community of Japanese people outside Japan apparently. But even so, I wasn't wholly clear what the drivers of economic growth would have been.