If you read my mini City Guide from last year you’re probably already acquainted with the geography of the place. It’s always important to be aware of your surroundings when you’re in a foreign land.

Now you’re here, you don’t have a lot of time to randomly explore. And that would not be efficient anyway because São Paulo is humongous in size. I’ve lived here all my life, almost 4 decades, and I haven’t explored everything yet.

But if you’re near a Subway station (Metro) you’re in luck as many of the staples of the city are at walking distance from the many stations or not far by taxi from one of them. So let me pinpoint a few must-go places.

For the Feijoada you will go to Bolinha and for great barbecue you will choose Vento Haragano or Fogo de Chão. Unfortunately none of them are within walking distance of Paulista Ave, but they are close by taxi and I recommend you take one. They are definitely not on the cheap side, but if you’re here, you should try our best.

Another staple of São Paulo: its intense night life. You will want to try it at least once. After sunset, all kinds of tribes spread around the city. If you’re staying on Paulista Ave, you’re already next to some of those places: Augusta St.

At Augusta and nearby streets such as Bela Cintra, you will find Beco 203 if you like disco, rock, some alternative bands and indie music. FunHouse, if you’re young, as the crowd is just above teenager age. D-Edge is a 3 story high warehouse with great decoration, rock and international DJs. Lab Club for pop and electronic, and enjoy the molecular drinks.

If you’re looking for the popular Brazilian country music, Sertanejo, try Villa Country and Wood’s. Now, if you want something more VIP, go to Club A or Pink Elephant. If you like GLS parties, you want to go to The Week, Bubu Lounge or A Lôca.

Just don’t party too hard on the conference days :-)

So, you did party hard. Now it’s time to fix your hangover. And for that, I recommend you go to Bella Paulista which is a 24-hour super bakery with everything you need, from bread, to sandwiches, soups, and everything to calm you down.

If you’re more on the intellectual side, you’re also in luck, because MASP - The São Paulo Art Museum is right around the corner, together with Casa das Rosas, for literature and poetry, and finally Itaú Cultural, a reference in terms of culture and research, with many expositions you can visit, do check it out.

There are theaters around but unfortunately you would need to understand Brazilian Portuguese to appreciate them, such as Comedians Comedy Club.

Now, you can go to Old Downtown to appreciate some of the classics. First stop is very early in the morning at Metro São Bento. From there you can reach Mercado Municipal, our humongous central market, to try fresh ingredients, spices, and everything a high-end, high-quality, one-of-a-kind market has to offer. Definitely visit it if you can, try the sandwiches and other food there. You can learn a lot about the culture of any place by visiting its central market.

Then, go to Metro Estação da Luz, from there you can go visit Museu da Língua Portuguesa. It’s the only museum in the world dedicated entirely to a language. This will enlighten you a lot about our Portuguese language. And right next to it you can go to Pinacoteca to enjoy some more great art.

If you’re into history, go to Metro Ipiranga and get a bus or taxi to the Parque da Independência and at the same place the Museu Paulista. Unfortunately, as of now, the museum is closed for restoration, so check their website for updates.

If you’re staying during the weekend, I recommend going to Metro Liberdade on Sunday. Liberdade is the Asian neighborhood of São Paulo. Some may be surprised that it’s smaller than you might think given how well known the place is. The main places are near the Metro and Galvão Bueno Ave. There are several Japanese restaurants, stores that sell Japanese ingredients and foods and on Sunday they have an outdoor fair. Quite hidden around there you can also find the Busshinji Temple and the Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa, the museum about the century-old immigration of Japanese to Brazil.

Now, if you’re into being healthy, going to relax in a park is another great option. Again, right next to Paulista Ave, you will find Parque Trianon. But of course, the staple of the city is Parque do Ibirapuera. You can go to Metro Vila Mariana and get a bus or taxi to the park. It’s huge, although just half the size of New York’s Central Park. But you will find museums, expositions and other activities around, it also rents bikes so you can have a ride inside the park if you want.

To wrap it up, night is approaching, the sun is setting, so you will go to Metro Vila Madalena which is the traditional region for bars and bohemians. Bar Astor, Boteco São Bento, Bar Filial. Particularly you want to go straight to Aspicuelta Street where you will find many of the great bars next to each other such as Melograno Bar, Mercearia São Pedro, Salve Jorge, São Cristóvão.

There are several places I didn’t even attempt to mention such as Memorial da América Latina, Berrini, Cidade Jardim, Edifício Itália, Museu do Teatro Municipal, Edifício Matarazzo, Pateo do Colegio, Espaço Cultural Catarse, Centro Cultural Fiesp, Instituto Cervantes, Teatro Eva Herz, Galeria Vermelho, Mosteiro de São Bento, 25 de Março and so many more places.

If you’re staying at least 2 weeks you can attempt to go to more places. São Paulo is also known for its dozens of malls, they are literally everywhere and easy to find as everybody knows where they are. But the items in this list are not so well known even for people who live here, so they’re interesting to visit.

Do you have any other questions? Leave a comment below. And if you’re from São Paulo and want to add more tips, also leave a comment below.

I wrote about my journey in 6 articles, originally in Brazilian Portuguese. You can use Google Translate that’s available in all of them, I’m curious to see if they work well enough. The journey starts in September 2012 and ends in October 2012. Here are the articles:

• Trip to San Francisco - Part 1 - Techcrunch Disrupt

• Trip to San Francisco - Part 2 - Visiting Companies

• Trip to San Francisco - Part 3 - People and Tourism

• Trip to Europe - Part 1 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

• Trip to Europe - Part 2 - Berlin, Germany

• Trip to Europe - Part 3 - Tel-Aviv, Israel

PS: I was in doubt about considering Israel in “Europe”, seems like it’s actually Asia but it’s considered part of Europe for sports :-)

I also posted hundreds of photos organized in Facebook Albums that you can access here:

• San Francisco
• Amsterdam
• Berlin
• Tel-Aviv/Jerusalem

Finally, I’ve documented my every move while there through Instagram, you can see them all here

Enjoy!

@AkitaOnRails, if you crash the plane tweeting with that 3G on, you’ll embarrass the whole country! LOL!!!

It was a joke, of course :-) But it was the push I needed to finally write about it: people acting on false premises.

A few months ago, on my way to yet another event, I kept my iPhone on, on purpose, as always. I usually flip on Airplane Mode once we’re in the air to save battery, but before takeoff I was watching a video podcast. Then a lady next to me decided to pick a fight and told me to turn it off. I ignored her. So what did she do? She called a flight attendant. Ugh.

She even blurted out what a lot of people still ignorantly believe: “this ‘gentleman’ is risking my life!” Picture my urge to fire back a “shut the fuck up!”. Of course I didn’t :-)

I figure readers of my blog don’t buy this, but even so, plenty of people may not know why the warning exists in the first place. Just think it through. If a wireless gadget really had even the slightest chance of interfering with the plane’s communications, enough to bring it down, would you, as the airline owner, let anyone board your plane with a cell phone?

It’s the same as letting someone board with a bomb and politely asking: “we kindly ask passengers carrying bombs not to activate them while inside the plane.” Duh. The fact that we can board with electronics is already proof that none of them put the plane at risk. That would be idiotic. If it actually brought planes down, every cell phone would go into the cargo hold in a lead container, the same way sharp objects never make it past security.

So if it does no harm, why does that damn message still play before takeoff and before landing? Now comes a conclusion by induction. What are the two most critical moments of a flight? Takeoff and landing.

Those are exactly the moments the crew wants everyone alert to any emergency announcement. If everyone’s got headphones on, playing video games, typing on a laptop, an emergency message takes forever to reach the whole cabin. The only goal of telling you to shut off your gadgets is to get our attention. Nothing else.

Here’s my conspiracy theory. If they told the truth, “to have your attention in an emergency, we ask you to turn off your devices,” nobody would turn anything off. So they figure it’s better to put collective stupidity to work and say “please turn off your cell phones, video games, mp3 players and computers, and airplane mode isn’t enough.”

In other words, they quietly weaponize the fear of signal interference so that passengers police each other, the way that lady policed me. That builds peer pressure that forces everyone to comply, just to skip the argument.

By the way, if any of this were actually true, I’d never board a plane. Bad actors exist, so why trust that they’d switch theirs off? And I wouldn’t understand anyone working on a plane knowing the passengers are a hazard. Picture that.

So yes, if you believe a cell phone signal can bring down a plane, you’re still stuck in the mental laziness I described in my previous article. If you want more detail, I stumbled on a Mythbusters episode today about exactly this.

Electronic gear does not bring down airplanes. Airlines are cleverly cashing in on the fear that collective ignorance produces. Smart strategy.

Oh, and although this doesn’t exactly count as proof, I’ve tested it on nearly all my flights and kept my iPhone and iPod on the whole time :-P No plane fell out of the sky, obviously. But sure, I always pay attention during takeoff and landing, because I get the principle. The rest is just experimentation.