More Travels- Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo

In order to repay the generosity of Arno and his partner Silvia, Jamila and I offered to cook them a ´typical American´dinner on Sunday night. Cooking in someone else´s kitchen is difficult, trying to find the spices, the particular utensils, etc. Finally, Jamila and I were able to complete a spaghetti with meat sauce, broccoli (Arno challenged my favorite vegetable by saying they had no flavor- I had to prove him wrong!) and garlic bread. It was pretty delicious, as Jamila and I are a pretty solid cooking team. And it was so nice to eat vegetables!
We left for Sao Paolo on Monday. I had booked plane tickets through Azul airlines, a local company founded by the creator of Jet Blue. When we got to the airport, we were treated to a complementary buffet (for all Azul passengers) and then a delay. While we only had to wait for about an hour, other passangers had been stuck at the Porto Alegre airport for 6 hours. We made it onto a plane that stopped in Navigantes, arrived in Campinas and then we hopped on an Azul bus to Sao Paulo. All in all it took six hours- way less than the 20 hour bus ride we opted out of.
We got to the Hostel in Sao Paulo in the Vila Madalena neighborhood, where our friend Forrest just recently finished his study abroad. It was exciting to walk around a city and I wish we could have done it with him! We did meet a traveler from Sweden named Claus, with whom we walked around. We took the Metro, which was a cheap $1.25 USD per ride and went to the MASP, the art museum, the Mercadao (pronounced Mer-cah-dow), a cross between Canal Street, China town, and Times Square. People were selling underwear, candy jewelry, batteries, bootleg movies and games, purses, and even a live turtle! The market spanned many many blocks. Also, we made a stop at McDonald´s for my first chesseburger from Micky D´s! I´m ashamed to say this, but it was delicious. I have a picture to prove it.  We then walked into a Cathedral, one of the oldest neo-gothic in the continent.
We rounded out our long day by picking up ingredients for dinner. Cooking will be cheap and keep us warm! It was a little rainy and chilly today but hopefully the weather will clear up, especially for when we get to Rio!