J&J Go South 2023 - Day 1 - Jenn Jumps Weird
After a 9-month hiatus, we are back traveling the globe with our first vacation of 2023. But before we got today we should remember that this is a similar trip we had planned in 2020 that was of course canceled due to COVID. After a significant amount of planning, we are off for 10 days in Brazil and Argentina. We began the trip on Thursday, April 20th after a half day of work. I met Jenn back at our apartment where I dropped off Frasier to go to Far Fetched and we jumped into an Uber a little after 3 PM. I am not sure what was going on with our Uber driver but he decided to take the slowest route possible and we made it to JFK a little before 5 PM. A long drive.
When we arrived in JFK we arrived at an empty line at LATAM. We went to the business class line and dropped off our bags before going to the Clear TSA Pre-Check line for security. Jenn and I were just in this terminal a few weeks back to go to California so a bit of deja vu. We only had about 45 minutes before boarding so we skipped the lounge and grabbed a burger to split at The Palm Restaurant. It's a fine airport burger and fries and hit the spot. By the time we got to our gate to board our plane to Sao Paulo, we were one of the last on board. We were fortunate enough to book two business class seats out to Sao Paulo and were able to get cozy and have a glass of champagne before taking off.
The flight from New York to Sao Paulo is right around 9 hours. Within the first hour, they came by with our dinner. Jenn and I both went with their steak which was good (a bit tough). I had a fantastic glass of Cab and Jenn had a Chardonnay. They wouldn’t give Jenn two desserts so she went with a cheese board. Within ten minutes of them clearing dinner we had both made up our beds and I was lights out for the rest of the flight, Jenn finished the Sex and the City movie before she fell asleep. They did come by to ask if we wanted breakfast but like lazy teenagers, we shooed them away and got every last second of sleep we could.
We landed in Sao Paulo a little after 5 AM and after a 20-minute wait to get the door open, we made it quickly through customs, grabbed our luggage, and met our driver to take us to the Grand Hyatt. He picked us up in a beautiful Mercedes which made the 50-minute drive to the hotel painless. When we arrived I’ll be honest I was falling asleep standing at the check-in counter, they gave us the keys to our room and we fell back asleep almost instantly for a few hours.
By the time our alarm went off at 10 AM, we probably could have slept for a couple more hours but decided against it, instead ordering room service and getting ready for the day. Jenn got scrambled eggs, I had the eggs Benedict, and we split some bacon, sausage, and cheese bread. It was fine, not great, but enough to give us some energy to go out and explore Sao Paulo.
Our first and only stop today was to the Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand or easier to the Museum of Art. We grabbed an “Uber Black” from our hotel which ended up being a Ford Focus and drove the 20 minutes to the museum. It is a stunning day out, a little over 70 degrees, and with some streets closed we had to walk a couple of beautiful blocks to the museum. When we arrived we went to a nearby Starbucks to look for a Sao Paulo or Brazil mug and came up empty-handed (not the last time today) and stood in line for tickets to the museum. There were about four floors of artwork, but the main floor was two floors up and was a mix of South American and European Art. We loved the way they displayed the art, hanging beautifully from the ceiling, and floating in rows. We spent a few hours touring the various floors and exhibits before making our way back out into the beautiful Sao Paulo day.
From there we walked up and down some beautiful streets of Sao Paulo and stopped at four other Starbucks that all didn’t have the mugs we were looking for. So instead we left back to our hotel with another “Uber Black” this time a Peugeot. We made it back much quicker, walked by the hotel's pool which looked inviting, and got our swimsuits on for two hours of laying by the pool. By the time 5 PM rolled around it started to cool down (it is fall here after all) and so we went back to the room. Jenn immediately fell asleep when we got back, and I worked on this post and started looking at the rest of the trip ahead of us.
A little after 6 PM I woke Jenn up from her slumber and we got ready for dinner. Before we left though we decided to have a pre-dinner cocktail at the hotel bar. Jenn had a “Sexy Lady” and I had a Gin Martini. It was just the right amount before we grabbed our Uber to take us to tonight's main attraction, Evvai, a one-Michelin-star restaurant in the heart of Sao Paulo.
When we arrived we were greeted by the front staff who took our name for our reservation and had us sit on a couch near the bar to start the evening with another cocktail and the first of the thirteen courses for tonight's dinner. Evvai is a mix of Italian and Brazilian food and for the next three hours, we were whisked away on a creative, fun, and delicious dinner. When we wrapped up the box of treats in the bar we were taken to the second floor to have the remaining dozen courses. There before each course, we were given a small card with a drawing on the front that represented the next dish we were supposed to guess what was coming. Some were obvious and most were complete mysteries to me. Luckily on the back of each card was a description of what we were eating.
The entire dinner was a success from the small bites at the beginning of the meal to the pasta, steak, and ribs toward the end. Each dish had a fun quirky invention that meant that there was no boring course. I can’t over-emphasize how much fun we had the entire evening, it felt like a dream. By the time the popsicle topped with pop rocks, and a tiramisu in the shape of a balloon came out the meal was wrapping up and we were starting to hit our edge. Jenn had another glass of Chardonnay so we were both feeling nice and toasty by now as well. We wrapped up a string of small desserts and a blank card for us to fill out about our dinner. I had Jenn draw the Empire State Building and write a quick message about how much we enjoyed it. We left Evvai a little before 11 PM and were back in our room 15 minutes later. I couldn’t imagine a better way to start our trip down south.
