Brazil 2
Oh, what a day – here at Rosewood Sao Paulo. 05:30, touchdown in San Paulo, half an hour early. A full A350. It’s very quick through immigration. No bag to pick up. 20 minutes from plane touchdown. An hour-long journey downtown to Paulista area.
Arrival at the hotel is unique. You swoosh down a floor, but it’s all surrounded by Brazilian rainforest and marvelously lit, kind-of nightclub lighting. Somehow libraries have got down there too, but by now you’re undercover, so the libraries don’t get wet. This is intentional to give an arrival feeling that makes you say, wow. Up to the sixth floor, which looks as though a whole class of early teenagers has been given access to as many colors as they like.
This was Sao Paulo’s top maternity hospital until the end of the last century and #614 room was actually the top maternity suite. Something like a quarter of a million babies, they say, were born here.
A beautiful breakfast was waiting and Girlahead couldn’t stop eating the fruit and some delicious little round rolls. They’re not bread, they’re more corn and cheese. They appear everywhere and they’re absolutely addictive.
Later, after showering and exercising, it was lunch with the hotel GM, Marie-Berengere Chapoton, above. She and her team have made this into the meeting place in town. The hotel opened its first nine bedroom January 2022, in COVID, and they decided simply to market to locals. Even now, 50% of the people staying at what is now a 187-room hotel are Brazilians, but locals come in and meet here. During lunch, one was introduced to this person and that person,
Then there was an art tour of the whole complex, including the elevators, which are all individual galleries of original Amazon plants, done specially, over three years, by Wilmo Correa.. There was time for a gym session earlier. Fabulous gym, latest Technogym equipment, floor-to-ceiling windows, and you’re looking out into nothing but Brazilian rainforest greenery. Then to the hotel’s still-working church – a service was going on, for a 100th birthday (on Saturdays at 11 there’s weekly open-to-all mass0. Then what was called sound healing, which was weird, it was feet washing by a gorgeous person wearing floral trousers and a white top, who murmured a bit, washed feet, did some drums and bells, and shook what looked like a tambourine but produces sounds of running water.
This place is food heaven. As well s numerous places around, there’s. inhouse, that glorious 24-hour Terrace. Lunch one day was outside by the Emerald Pool, a big curvilinear pool surrounded by Amazon greenery (the pool’s entirely lined with small bits of tile, all reused from the original hospital.) There are four white tables with two chairs each actually in the water. Seated normally, on dry land, Girlahead had fritto misto followed by the most delicious white mousse, capuacu, botanical name. Theobroma grandiflorum (same family as cocoa – it’s supposed to taste as a mix of chocolate, pineapple, and banana). Dinners were Brazilian, with a French touch and then without….
