Home Sweet Home

We made it back home, upgraded all the way, thank you. No nasty immigration officers, no cancelled flights, no lost luggage. In short, a real travel success story.

The weather in San Diego when we left was hell but now it’s gorgeous and balmy, the days are shorter, and today we finalized our Christmas travel plans. We’re doing a driving tour of the Northern California coastline: Redwood forests, seaside spas, the wine country, and wrapping it up with a couple of nights in San Francisco.

And in March I’m meeting Hector in Istanbul for a week, then in May we’re doing an exploratory visit to Tuscany in search of places we might want to live. Yippee.

Bye Bye Brazil

Today is our last day in Sao Paulo. We have to check out of the hotel at 2pm but the flight doesn’t leave until 10pm so the luggage and I are in weird travel limbo while Hector works. Like most South American hotels the staff here is very helpful so I can hang out in the Executive lounge all afternoon and even take a shower before our flight if I want. So far, we have not been upgraded to business class and I’m uneasy. It’s a long way home in coach.

I can’t say I’d rush back to Sao Paulo but it’s been a nice visit. Of course, the locals are so eager for us to be impressed and they are rightly proud of their restaurants. They have none of that American shame about eating meat. At a restaurant yesterday we were sitting near an attractive young woman in her twenties and she ordered a filet mignon for lunch. I tried to imagine that happening in Southern California and burst out laughing.

Bom Dia from Sao Paulo

Yes, this is the view no matter which direction one looks so it's best not to look around. Down at ground level things are much nicer. SP is a very clean city, we took the subway yesterday and it was absolutely spotless- far better than anywhere I've seen.

The Paulistas are quite friendly. English is not as common as I expected but by combining Spanish, English, Sign language and Head nodding one can get by. On paper, Portugese looks similar to Spanish but boy when it falls out of their mouths it's more like Vietnamese.

Our hotel (Renaissance by Marriott, of course) is in a very upscale neighborhood called Jardim, with lots of trendy shops and restaurants. Meat features very highly here in the restaurants. I've had a great chateaubriand (all to myself) and a couple of sirloins. This would be a great place to do the Atkins diet.

Hector's working this morning at a nearby school, then this afternoon we're going to a local fleamarket to ascertain what the locals think of as junk.