São Paulo

The 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.