Dec 16 Friday

Check out today is at noon so I can have a bit of a lazy morning repacking all my stuff.   At 11:30 I went down to check-out and have my luggage stored until later this afternoon.  I decided to make up for some of those lazy days I just spent and visit another part of the downtown area:  Luz  (which means Light in both Spanish and Portuguese).

Took the metro again, but this time on the Yellow line, which is quite short and ends at Luz Station, where it meets up with almost every other metro line in the city.  This metro stop is therefore HUGE, and like every other station in the city, it is impeccably clean;  not a single item of garbage ANYWHERE.   And it’s not because they have cleaning staff around the clock because I did not see any cleaning staff at all.  Nor is it because you are being scared by signs that say that if you litter you will be jailed, or fined an exorbitant amount of money, because I saw no such signs.  People simply don’t litter in the subway !   Now it may be that there are heavy fines, I simply don’t know.   Every single station had great signage as well.  If you had a map and knew which street or metro line you needed, it was very easy to follow directions.   And it is not an expensive trip =  2.90 Real per ride which is only about $2.

Estaçio da Luz

The two main things I wanted to visit, in only 2 ½ hours were the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa (Portuguese Language Museum) and the Pinacoteca Park.  If I had extra time, I might check out a Monastary a little further away.  The museum is located in what I thought was an old Train Station, but it turned out that the Estaçao da Luz is still in use.  Unfortunately, everything in the Museum of Portuguese Language was in Portuguese, no English, French or Spanish translations available so after picking up the brochure (Available in English !)  I decided not to go in for a visit.

But this is what I found out about Portuguese (at least the one spoken in Brazil) and why I’m having such a difficult time understanding it.  It is a mixture of Amerindian (various native languages spoken in the area where Brazil is presently located), Portuguese (European 17^th century) & African (from the various tribes where the slaves came from).  No wonder I can’t understand it !  And the sound of it, from certain speakers on TV, actually grates on my nerves;  very strange since I usually love the sound of other languages.

I noticed that across the street there was another museum, which had not been mentioned in any of my brochures, Museu Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo, containing Brazilian art.  I went in for the price of 6R or $4.  Not only were the paintings and sculptures worthwhile, but the building itself was such an architectural pleasure on the inside.

 Inside gutted down to the brickwork and art added

 And it has its own upside down glass pyramid

 Notice anything strange about the 3rd floor openings?

 It is a mirrored reflection !  There are actually only 2 stories with a mirror on the ceiling, creating an optical illusion.

 One of the "rebuilt" hallways

 and one of the many beautiful sculptures.  
Photography of the paintings and inner sculptures was not allowed.

Pinacoteca Park was just beside this museum so I did a quick walk through.

 

 Sculptures in the park

 Beautiful trees

 and a water grotto

I still had some time left over, but not enought to get to the monestary, so I decided to walk towards a structure I could see in the distance. 

It turned out to be yet another train station: Estaçao Julio Prestes, but the building also includes a concert hall. No longer at its prime, the station is now surrounded by an area which is “less than safe” as you can see by the last picture.

  Inside the station, stained glass

I kept walking, thinking I might be able to get back to Luz from the other side, but when I saw the garbage in the streets and that the locals seemed a little too scary I decided to turn around and head by to the Luz metro stop and head back to the hotel.

By 2:45 I had picked up my luggage, got into a taxi, and was headed to the airport for my 6:30 flight to South Africa.  So here are my last pictures of Sao Paulo and South America, taken on the drive to the airport.

 Sao Paulo skyscrapers

  The suburbs around the airport

  That will be me in less than 3 hours !

Unfortunately I was not able to sleep at all during the 8 hour flight, but I did watch 3 movies !