I got to go to São Paulo , Brazil, on a business trip from January 15 through January 21, 2006. This was my first time in Brazil; I had a great time and would go again.

We stayed at L’Hotel, a very nice hotel near one of the major shopping and banking streets, Avenida Paulista.

The view from my hotel room window

A park on Avenida Paulista

A postcard with a panoramic view of Sao Paulo Centro

The main office of the bank we were visiting, Banco Real, which is owned by ABN AMRO, is on that street.

Part of the facade of the main office of Banco Real

The Bank is sponsoring a running race in January – this is a post card handed
to all the employees while we were in the office

We walked around the area near the hotel a bit, finding some interesting radio towers, constructed like the Eiffel Tower. We also did some shopping, and found Bob’s Burgers!

Two radio towers on Avenida Paulista

I also went to the MASP, the museum of art in Sao Paulo. Its a really nice museum with a small but very good collection including a Hans Memling and three Hieronymus Bosch’s.

The facade of MASP

The ticket to enter MASP

I read a great book on this trip, which I found by accident – while searching on amazon.com for a pocket guide to Sao Paulo, I found a book titled City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo by Teresa P.R. Caldeira – you can find my brief review in my blog. If you visit Sao Paulo, do be careful – there’s lots of crime and there are very very bad areas of town; two colleagues were robbed as they arrived at our hotel 15 minutes before we walked in from dinner.