Quick rip into São Paulo

by Nick Greece

By KAVU

May 31^st, 2022

So, you've got a 7-hour layover in a really cool city?

Leave the airport! ....... Our motto at KAVU:

Short trip let it rip!

I recently attended the 5th Pan American Championships in a small town in Brazil called Govenador Valadares. On the way home, I had a 7-hour layover in São Paolo.... on a weekend. I bring time-of-week up because for me.... the traffic is always a deciding factor for "if I leave the hermetically sealed airport bubble" to rally on a bonus adventure.

Luckily, using Waze or Uber you can discover what the commute to the fun will be. Almost all international airports have storage lockers easily found by doing a quick airport website search. Drop all your bags, call up Uber, and head for the part of town that interests you most!

I always like to have an incredible meal and see some art if I can. My plan: check out what I want to see and then, return with 2.5 hours until my flight and.... make sure to not return when the baggage lockers are closed! In the gallery below, I'll walk you through my São Paulo experience. I can’t tell you what an added delight it was to get one more incredible dose of Brazil before I boarded my flight home.

I flew in on a puddle jumper to São Paulo from Belo Horizonte and quickly found the luggage storage in the International terminal.... as that would be the terminal I would use to fly back to the states from. I dropped all my bags, took my phone, my passport, and a jacket and headed toward a recommended restaurant. Riding through São Paulo with very little traffic, I enjoyed passing by where they store the carnival floats. Amazed at the ornate immensity of the art floats, they dwarfed anything I have ever seen before. It was incredible to roll though a city full of massive wall murals and art decorating building facades.

Arriving in a posh and quiet neighborhood, I spotted the restaurant that had been recommended and slowly approached. I apologized for my flip flops, asking if they would please admit me for lunch? The doorman allowed me entrance and informed the maître that I was an American.

I wonder how he could tell??

Chez Claude in Sao Paolo is a great, laid back lunch spot and upscale dinner locale which serves an amazing variety French/Brazilian plates. For me, it was a culinary experience worthy of my pilgrimage from the stale airport bubble. I dined on steak tartar for an appetizer, a shrimp truffle risotto for my main, and the most incredible Brazilian cheese cake for desert. I come from the land of New York cheesecakes and after tasting this smooth slice of heaven I think we should consider renaming to Brazilian Cheesecake.

I wrapped up lunch and quickly jumped in another Uber to head to the MASP museum, or the Modern Art São Paulo, for a quick gander at "what’s good" in modern art in Brazil. They had an incredible exhibit that thrilled an ADD art viewer's mind, allowing me to interact with the exhibit in a way I have never experienced before. Around 75 great works of art were all mounted in vertical columns, placed standing on their own in one big room.

I had to weave thorough the art to get to the other side and one could pass by or stay for as long as one wanted..... also taking in the backside of the work which I have never seen in any other gallery.

If you stayed a while you could take in tall the details of the work, read the information about the artist and artwork, look on the back of the column while keeping in mind the piece it was explaining.

This alone made a really interesting interaction as you had to rely on your memory for highlights about what you were now reading about. If you decided to continue, a whole new depth of art was revealed. It felt a little like a real life art-walk Frogger.

I often would find myself bouncing back and forth between the horizontal columns of great works of art, looking at both the front and back. All was revealed... including the faming, the way it was mounted, and bracing. It was radical and IMHO, a brilliant curation of a museums catalogued collection which also was environmentally friendly - as the pieces of art reside normally São Paulo.

I breezed through as I like to do when viewing large art collections, hopped back in yet another Uber, and returned to the airport with 2 hours to spare, settling into a long flight home which, I slept well on. I have to think I owe that to the half-bottle of wine I consumed at Chez Claude... and maybe some to the hustle;-)