South America › Brazil

São Paulo

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Places worth going

MaresiasDon't missTownsLong beach with the mountains standing right behind it and water warm enough to stay in until you are bored. Stayed at a friend's place on the sand with a pool and a lawn running down to it, which is the way to do this - the sunset from the grass with the palms in front of it was as good as anything on the beach itself. It is a few hours out of São Paulo, so treat it as a weekend rather than a day.Mercado Municipal de São PauloDon't missFood & drinkGo for the mortadella sandwich and do not pretend you are there for anything else. It is a genuinely stupid amount of meat in a bread roll, you will not want dinner, and it is famous for a reason. Eat it standing up at the counter upstairs where everyone else is, and get a pastel de bacalhau too if you can still move afterwards.Praia das ToninhasDon't missOutdoorsWhere I stayed in Ubatuba, and the evening I remember is not the beach at all - it is standing around the churrasqueira (barbecue) in the dark waiting for the meat to come off. Toninhas is a long curve with green hills coming right down to it and it is calm enough to swim without thinking about it, which after the surf beaches further up the coast is the appeal. Come out of season if you can. Ubatuba is a São Paulo weekend town and the whole road down fills up in summer and at New Year. Get the churrasco going before it gets dark.São PauloDon't missTownsThe thing nobody prepares you for is the scale. From a window on the western side at night it is houses and streetlights to the horizon in every direction, and it keeps going long after you expect it to stop - and that is a suburb, not the middle. Flying out is the same story from above: you are over it for ages. It is not a beautiful city and it is not trying to be, but it is the one with the food, the markets and the best night out in the country, and I would rather have a few days here than an afternoon on the way somewhere else. Stay somewhere central for the walking, and go up something tall on a clear evening.BrotasWorth a stopTownsWent out for the waterfalls and got them at full volume and completely brown, which is what the rain does to that river in January rather than the clear green you see in everyone else's photographs. Still worth the trip, and the town is entirely set up for this sort of thing - rafting, abseiling, all of it. Ask what the river has been doing for the last week before you commit to anything on it.Catedral da SéWorth a stopLandmarksEnormous, neo-Gothic, with the palms lined up in front of it and the square always full of people. Ten minutes is enough unless you go inside, and you should - it is a lot cooler and a lot quieter in there than the front steps suggest. Worth folding into a morning in the centre rather than going out of your way for.