Parque Ibirapuera and Republica

I want this blog to be a strictly accurate record, free of exaggerations and untruths, so I feel obliged to point out that in fact I only imported 140g of Cadbury's Dairy Milk into the country, not 500g as reported yesterday. Truth, though it kills me. Apologies for this serious misinformation. :-)

I got up about midday, maybe a bit later, half as I expected, so I didn't get breakfast. The bed is comfortable but it doesn't have a duvet or blankets, just a thin sheet on top. It's warm enough that this wasn't technically a problem but it felt weird, especially while I was going through my usual hour or two of "I'll just stay in bed five more minutes" before getting up; the sheet is translucent and not conducive to such purposes. I am half heartened and half disappointed that just because I'm on holiday I am still unable to get up in the morning.

Once I did drag myself out of bed I walked over to Parque Ibirapuera as planned. Beyond saying that it's large and has a number of museums and other buildings within it, I can't say much more than that it seemed fairly nice. To paraphrase Jerome K Jerome, with all due respect to its designers and caretakers, it is pretty much "the usual sort of a park". There are a few photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45804996@N03/sets/72157623218679886/

I went to the modern art museum and the 'Museo Afro Brasil' in the park, both of which were free. I don't know about the latter, but the modern art museum is not always free, but it was today. I suspect that's because it has only two rooms and one of them was shut while they put in new exhibits. What I did see was OK, and there was an interesting painting by Vicente de Mello called "Mondrian negro", which is a Piet Mondriaan-style image but all in very dark shades of black. To me at least, the central pattern of squares seems to appear behind the plane of the painting, a bit like a hologram, which was quite cool. The very strange and low quality 'all black' image in the photos from the park is my attempt to capture it on e-film.

I also tried to go to the contemporary art museum in the park, but it may have been closed. Nothing and no-one actually told me this, but the only entrance I could find to the building was blocked off by about three delivery vans and a uniformed security guard and the only people going in or out seemed to be workmen. Maybe this is how they invite visitors in in Brazil, I'm not culturally aware enough to say. I decided not to bother trying.

I ate at a restaurant in the park, taking advantage of the international language of the gesture. A gut-busting and very decent steak and chips, if slightly overpriced (about 14 quid with tip).

In the absence of anything obvious to do tonight, I looked at my rather crappy guide book ("South America on a shoestring"), which essentially dismisses the whole city in about five pages and prefaces it with comments which I personally interpret as "don't go there, it's boring and dangerous", and decided to go to Bar Brahma, an apparently lively and long-established bar in the Republica district of the city.

I got the metro over there, which was easy but disappointing in two respects:
- I had to speak to a human being to buy a ticket instead of using a machine. Fortunately the ticketing system is extremely simple - any metro-only journey is BRL2.55 - so there were no language issues, but still. I was genuinely surprised.
- It wasn't obviously better or faster or cleaner than the tube in London. I expected it to be all three so I could join everyone else I know who has any experience at all of any public transport outside the UK saying just how bad (and especially, how dirty) the tube is. Oh well. The grass can't always be greener on the other side.

After getting slightly lost but wandering around purposefully anyway to avoid being an obvious victim ;-) I found Bar Brahma. I'd like to say it was fun and exotic and/or exciting, but I can't, because I didn't go in. It looked foul - not in a dangerous way, I'm sure it would have been more than fine, but it looked like the sort of wanky bar you find in Covent Garden and my self-respect wouldn't allow me to enter.

I wandered down Av. São João looking for somewhere better, but it was either the Covent Garden-esque charms of Bar Brahma, or extremely small and somewhat intimidating 'local' bars, or larger and less intimidating 'local' bars with no tables free. In the end I had a beer at one of the quiet 'local' bars a considerable distance down the street and felt extremely uncomfortable. They did have a video karaoke machine in there, but since there was approximately no-one else inside except the barman and the guy singing I resisted the temptation to use it. I sat outside on my own feeling as if I had a neon sign saying "tourist, help yourself" over my head while a table of intimidatingly noisy (but admittedly otherwise unoffensive) Brazilians talked next to me.

I wandered around a bit more afterwards and, despite expectations, found a decent-ish bar with live music and tables outside which weren't all occupied. (For the record, Santa Fe, Praça Dom José Gaspar, 42.) When I arrived the rather good pair of guys playing guitars and singing were performing "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Sultans Of Swing", which gives an idea of what kind of place it was, although they did switch to presumably Portuguese language songs afterwards. I stayed there until about midnight, at which point things were definitely winding up (the music had finished about an hour earlier) and got a cab home, which was remarkably easy. I could maybe have found somewhere else, but I figured I wouldn't push it.

If no one had told me it was dangerous here I don't think I'd be too worried. It all seems pretty safe, despite the somewhat rundown look of a lot of streets. I'm stupidly cautious most of the time, looking around for places where people might jump out at me (as if that's going to help anyway) and paying attention to how many people are on the street, then every now and then I do something dumb like count my money on the street or blatantly pull out my map and study it. Oh well, they say God looks out for children, fools and drunks, and two out of three ain't bad...