Going to Sao Paulo

What to do in Sao Paulo

by Alex Robinson

Few cities are so relentlessly urban as São Paulo. Envision some 19 million people squeezed into skyscraper apartment blocks with traffic-choked freeways slicing through the dense sprawl. Like New York and London, economic migration resulted in the city’s size. And like its sister cities to the north, if you penetrate São Paulo’s urban chaos, you find a continent’s worth of distinctive cultures—dances from Amazonia, cooking from the Pampas, samba from Rio, capoeira from Bahia, and festivals from the desert backlands of the northeast. Drink caipirinhas at the funky bars of Vila Madalena or Consolação, test your rhythm to the swing of tropicalia, eat fusion cuisine in swanky restaurants in Jardins, or wander around MASP—a post-modern cube on stilts with the finest collection of Renaissance and Impressionist art in the southern hemisphere.

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