I got up insanely late again, despite not being out late last night. I still didn't get to bed until about 3am because of dithering around and at about 7am I was woken up by what sounded like a helicopter hovering outside the window. Seriously. I have no idea what it actually was (I didn't get up and look outside), but it wasn't the ceiling fan as that was off. I went back to sleep to be woken up by a call from my ex-landlord at 9am. In the end I spent a fitful hour awake at around midday and got up about 1pm. I just can't drag myself out of bed.
I vaguely planned to go to those tall buildings I found out about yesterday today. I walked the whole length of Av. Paulista first, since wikitravel said it was a good thing to do and I figured it was cheap and easy and I hadn't yet seen the whole thing. I won't say it was a must-do in my opinion, but it was OK.
On the way I noticed Trianon park, so I went for a walk round there. Very lush, probably the closest I will ever get to being in a rainforest. :-)
I went over to the 3rd tallest building in the city afterwards, whose name I still can't remember, although it's near Sao Bento metro station. It's occupied by Santander by the looks of things, and although you only get five minutes on the open-air balcony at the top, I must say it's very decent of them to let the public up there for free given they seem to have three or four people employed full time to deal with the public as a result. It was quite interesting and a decent view, but perhaps because I'd already done the high altitude viewing thing and perhaps because it was a bit rushed once you got up there, it wasn't that brilliant. I took some photos but haven't put them on the web yet, they may show up eventually but to be honest it's nothing that different from the Edificio Italia pictures.
I tried to go up Edificio Martinelli nearby but after nerving myself to speak to the receptionist in a combination of basic Portuguese and gestures ("Eu gostaria vir <points up>
I was vaguely planning to go to a karaoke bar in the Japanese district (Liberdade) tonight - not to sing, just to see what it was like. I got the metro over there and it was a bit depressingly quiet all over the area and although I found the karaoke bar (and saw another place which claimed to do karaoke) I couldn't bring myself to go in. They didn't look that much fun, I'm easily intimidated by the linguistic difficulties here and neither of the places looked very 'open' to the street, which always puts me off. Honestly, once I get out of Brazil I will be so much more bold, really.
I walked up from there through the centre, past the cathedral, to a bar I've been to several times already. I know it's Monday night but walking through the centre it just seemed so dead. It's probably no different to the way parts of London always seem lifeless (the bit that springs to mind is the area southwest of Euston, several times I have wandered around there desperately looking for a pub and finding nothing but the odd rather bleak-looking restuarant), but I wasn't impressed. This was after all in the absolute centre of the city. I didn't want to go to the same old bar but I couldn't see any better alternative. I felt a bit of a stupid idiot for wandering around the fairly deserted centre, but there were a few, if not many, other people around and I got away with it so either I was brave and resourceful or a lucky fool. Either suits me.
It pissed down later, as is apparently usual here based on my experience so far, while I was at the bar so I spent the night looking out at the pseudo-tropical rain over a somewhat glum couple of pints. I suppose it's all experience.
I probably shouldn't hold it against the place, as I say it's Monday night and I probably just don't know where to go or have the nerve to go in if I did, but to be honest Sao Paulo seemed a bit of a joyless hole tonight. Overall I would still say it's been OK here, but although it's probably my fault for being overly cautious I wouldn't say it seems enormously fun. Various guides imply the club scene here is fantastic, and I fully admit to having made no effort to try it, although I'm not much of one for clubs anyway - a late drink at a bar is more my style, and there don't seem to be many bars which particularly appeal to me.
I am a bit scared about going to Rio on Wednesday but I'm sure it can't be much worse than here in terms of safety, if you're not completely naive (he said, naively). I don't know if it will be more fun, my gut feeling is that it will be more naffly touristy, which may or may not help given my peculiar prejudices and attitudes, but we'll see. To be honest, I am looking foward to getting into the Spanish-speaking parts where I will be able to have a stab at communicating with people and not keep avoiding places which aren't absolutely straightforward bars with tables on the street. On the other hand, once I leave Brazil I enter into an ill-defined maelstrom of vague travel plans, which will probably help to push me as much off balance as the language and safety concerns have here.
No response from the hotel booking website for Puerto Williams in Chile yet. I asked a friend to call the number on the hotel web site and apparently it doesn't work. Why is it so hard to give these people money?! I've therefore filled in the online booking form on the hotel's own web site, so based on my limited prior experience of Latin American hotels I guess they will start ignoring that almost immediately. It's good to know things are failing to progress in a new way, having someone different ignore me will be almost as good as getting an actual answer.
I'd like to think this blog post is a bit angsty in an interesting way, but I suspect it just comes across as whiny. WTF. ;-)
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