Shopping & Shoes!!!

Ahhh, I have the best husband in the whole wide world.  Last weekend we had no plans to go anywhere as I just got back from going somewhere, so my husband thought it would be good to go explore downtown São Paulo.  We jumped on a bus.  He had previously instructed me to only take the train (he thought there would be a better chance of me not getting lost… see post here to see why that logic was flawed), so it was nice to just hop on the bus and head straight up.

We had two plans

Rua Direta and Rua Vinte e Cinco de Março. We wandered around in a big circle, most of the stores had cheaply made clothing, toys, and cheaper household goods.  There was Hering, which it turns out is also in my neighborhood. Hering isn’t too expensive, and is pretty GAP like in appearance.  Random boutiques…then we found it… the WHOLE reason this trip was worth it… Mundial Calçados.  The top was Munidal, the bottom floor was the Mundial outlet. And the shoes, ahh the shoes were wonderful. I am pretty picky on my shoes, and find more often than not I settle for a pair of shoes as I need them, but rarely truly love shoes (well sometimes I love them, but don’t love the price). I loved the price, and I loved the shoes. I bought three pairs… aren’t they all cute??  With winter coming on, I’ll probably not get much use out of the first two, but they are nice classics, so I think will work next summer just fine.

I wanted to buy this pair, but with a 10 month old, wearing heels like this just didn’t make sense. But aren’t they ADORABLE? Sporty and sexy all in one.  Tennis shoe high heels. AND one thing I found with the shoes, unlike American shoes that look good, these actually were comfortable too. Usually you need to pay for cute and comfortable.  No wonder Brasilian women walk around in heels, the shoes don’t hurt!

I picked this shot since you can see the wee one sleeping

After my little shopping pitstop, we learned that Rua Vinte e Cinco de Março was closed at noon on Saturdays, so we began to head back, when my husband saw his mother ship. The Brasilian Stock Exchange – BOVESPA It was kind of funny just happening upon it while we were discount shopping downtown.  That’s the thing, in Brasi, you never know what you’ll happen upon from one neighborhood to the next.

Nearby there were some street performers.  A very talented singer who’s generator powered mic kept dying on him, and one of those guys who pretends to be a statue.  This guy stands still until he sees a good target, then bends down and blows a little “peep” whistle, startling them.  Most kids are kinda freaked out by this.  As you can see from the photo ours was more curious than scared. I tell you, he’s 2 minutes away from taking some strangers hand and disapearing into the sunset.

 

Funny Stories from that day

FIRST

The bus stop is right across from a large cathedral.  My Uncle is Catholic, but I am very much not, so haven’t ever actually been in a Catholic church… so we decided to pop in and see it as our last stop for the day.  It was a bit odd, as it was a tourist attraction, with signs everywhere, but it was also a working cathedral with confessionals and people buying candles and other paraphernalia at the “catholic items stand” in the church. The mixing of sacred and tourist was a new one for me… seriously people were walking around taking pictures (even though signs clearly stated otherwise).  It was beautiful inside… unfortunately my son wasn’t well behaved. See he’s very musically inclined, and at a young age recognized that certain environments are very conducive to echoes.  Yes, anytime we enter a parking garage he starts “echoing”… well I guess he figured out with the high ceilings and all of that concrete he could get a good echo… he was right of course.  We quickly headed out the back door with my husband’s hand clasped firmly over little screamer.

SECOND

As we exited the back door two little urchins were trying to get into the Cathedral.  The security guard wouldn’t let them in to the building. My husband said one was telling the other to go in and “confess all of his sins” and the other yelled back, “I’m not confessin’ my sins to anyone!”.  They’re probably 8 or 9… and I’m certain they had more sins to confess than I did at that age.

THIRD

More of an observation really. We stopped some Federal police, and by that we mean went up to the Federal Police that were just standing there… with all of the “Activity” going on downtown, there are Federal Police stands where they just kind of stand around and watch (in fact everywhere we go there are usually Federal Police just standing around…but that’s for another blog). We asked the group of Federal Police where the bus to get home was.  They looked at us, and then said, “Zona Sul?”  My husband is pretty certain it is because we were white, obviously out of place, and pretty nicely dressed.  Because see that’s where all of us expat folk live… Zona Sul.. that and rich Brasilians 🙂