BRAZIL || Sao Paulo - travel vlog (Altino Arantes, Beco do Batman, Liberdade) 15 Degrees North

15° North are travelling again! This time we are in Brazil in the southern hemisphere’s largest city, Sao Paulo. There we visit: Mosteiro de Sao Bento, Altino Arantes Building, Metropolitan Cathedral, Liberdade, Paulista Avenue, Mercado Municipal, Beco do Batman.
Jérémy and Ben here again! We love to travel and to satisfy our wanderlust, we are on a worldwide odyssey exploring the best places for a break around the world. We love to escape Britain to experience the best culture, cuisine and attractions that the globe has to offer. If you’re a tourist like us and just need a good itinerary for what to do and how to do it when you’re in Sao Paulo, we will show you the best things to put on your itinerary.
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Sao Paulo is the largest city in Brazil. In fact, Sao Paulo is the largest city in the entire world outside Asia. A vast and sprawling metropolis, it is often overlooked for its more showy neighbour, Rio de Janeiro, but there’s definitely something about Sao Paulo that just oozes fun. While there are some monuments in the city, we would say that it’s more about the vibe. There’s definitely something about the atmosphere that shows you that the people of this sun-drenched city just know how to have fun. There’s a lot of money here, as this is the financial centre of Brazil. So of the Brazilian rich elite reside in and around Sao Paulo. Even if they don’t spend their weekends here.
Getting a bird’s eye view of the city, it’s a vast concrete jungle that stretches out as far as the eye can see. As a result, it’s not the easiest of cities to get around, with quite a lot of traffic on the ground and a metro system that’s difficult to navigate. So to avoid being stuck in the city unable to get about follow our two handy tips.
1. Learn some Portuguese. There aren’t many countries in the world where English is not spoken or understood, but Brazil is definitely one of them. A few handy phrases will just help you out in a tight spot.
2. Take out cash. While you can pay by card nearly everywhere in Brazil, the one place that you can’t is the Sao Paulo metro. We learnt that the hard way. There is an app you can download and pre-pay your trips, but it’s very complicated and all in Portuguese, so you’re smarter than we are if you understand it.
Sao Paulo was founded by Portuguese colonial settlers in 1554. Before, the area was inhabited by the Tupi people, when it was known as the Piratininga plains. Centred around a college of Jesuit priests, the village was the only Portuguese settlement in the interior of Brazil for centuries. But then the city ballooned following Brazil’s independence in 1822.
While Sao Paulo was initially Brazil’s poorest region, it earned its wealth off the coffee trade. Its industrialisation in the early twentieth century was rapid, becoming the fastest growing city in the world. And while it saw of revolutions and civil unrest too, it went from a city of a million to a megalopolis of more than 30 million, making it the 12th most populous city on the planet.
There is something very distinctive about the Brazilian culture, which is decidedly tropical but clearly modern. But there are so many Portuguese touches across the city that you can really see the influence of this tiny European nation on this behemoth superpower that they spawned across the Atlantic. It’s clear that the Brazilians love the Portuguese and vice versa, but seeing churches clad with azulejos thousands of miles from Europe is somewhat surreal but a really welcome surprise.
Like most modern cities, Sao Paulo understandably has an amazing food scene. And while you should definitely explore some of its finer restaurants, it’s always street food that tickles of fancy the most. And you can find that in abundance here.
It’s also worth trekking out from the centre to experience Beco de Batman. Sao Paulo is a city known for its graffiti and street art, and nowhere is that better on show than here. This is a suburb that has fully surrendered to the artists, so there are murals painted on every available wall and are constantly being updated. But it’s the mural of Batman that is the city’s most famous, although there were many others that we preferred.
Sao Paulo is a bustling mammoth of a city and we loved exploring its streets. It’s busy, hot and fizzing with life, so why not come and see this legendary metropolis yourself?