I'm glad to have experienced Sao Paulo and at some point in the future will return for three reasons: the Fasano, the restaurants, and the clubs. But overall, it's a difficult city to love.
Certainly, the scale of it is spectacular - it goes on forever, the people are open, warm and friendly, and the dining out and nightlife superb; but it's a tough place with some of the ugliest cityscape I have ever seen. And we were told that its fearsome reputation for crime is well-founded: big swathes of the city are definite no-go zones. (Even in central districts, I was not ever comfortable taking my camera out).
But I kind of admire that the place cares so little about what you think of it.
There was just one SP "sight" I really wanted to do. Only the one: the BanESPA Tower offers truly incredible views to the horizon, through a thousand skyscrapers in all directions. It's an image I'd seen on a large scale some years ago, wrapped 360 degrees around the escalators at the London store Selfridges during their Brazil festival. From then, I'd wanted to see it.
But Saturday, when we got there, it was closed. Today, the lifts weren't working.
Then it started to rain, again.
So these shots will have to do instead, taken from the top of our hotel.
