Andy HoffmanAfter a week in Saó Paulo, we opted for a vacation in Guarujá, the closest beach to the city. Saó Paulo is both a city and a state, Brazil’s economic generator. The city occupies a hilly plateau a hundred kilometers from the Atlantic; the main highway between them passes through several impressive tunnels. Santos, Brazil’s major port, lies just west of Guarujá, separated by a large estuary. There’s talk about linking the working port to the busy beach with a tunnel, which would change the character of both places.
We needed the vacation given the months we had experienced just prior to jetting to Brazil. My aged mother began her swift decline in August. We decided to move from our pricey and large apartment to a more modest place close to her. She died in November, before we could move, so we continued to dismantle the old place but pivoted away from taking the new one. In a handful of weeks, we buried my mother, moved out of our four-bedroom place, and prepared my mom’s co-op for sale. Each had about 20 years of accumulated stuff, and moving out of each involved deep emotions. We definitely needed the break.
We received a gift of two weeks in a Guarujá apartment that had not been seriously occupied since the 1980s, a time capsule that reflected Brazil’s turn from decades of dictatorship to the wildly disorganized freedom of democracy. The apartment’s owner, an elderly lady with European roots, had suddenly left the place with Italian magazines and French novels, never to return. The place was cleaned weekly, and so had no spiders. We can’t speak about other insects though. Still, the apartment complex had a lovely pool and was a five-minute walk to the beach. On your way to the beach you would stop at the apartment’s guard house and the portaria would make sure someone set up chairs and an umbrella for you.
At first we couldn’t get the stove to work. We clearly needed to go out to find breakfast. Brazil has a dizzying variety of padarias, bakeries that sometimes included a small market, or a restaurant, or table service. You could go for bread and other baked goods, a complete meal, or just a suco or coffee.
Our closest padaria was called Bella Guarujá, and in addition to the full suite of services, they had both air conditioning and WiFi, both of which our free apartment lacked. (Read Deb’s entry here.) We decided on first arriving at Bella Guarujá that it would be our home away from home. We loved the staff – a small battalion of uniformed women dedicated to making the padaria a stand-out place. We went there virtually every day our first week, picking up bread and fruit and drinking water, and enjoying a cup of coffee, fresh-made juice, and bread grilled in butter. I had my first açai there, served as a frozen juice whipped with orange juice. We also learned that, in Brazil, cappuccino usually comes with chocolate, sometimes mixed in, sometimes a melty solid, sometimes with sprinkled powder. That might have been the moment I converted to Brazilian.
Eventually, we branched out to other padarias. The fancy one with pricey cakes. The one that emphasized its Portuguese roots. The hundred-year old institution with a cappuccino more like affogato, They all had their charms, but for me Bella Guarujá remained the essential padaria: unpretentious, neighborhoody, and committed to quality. I became obsessed with a Brazilian treat they made better than anyone, the paó de mel. Imagine a macaron, but with the two cookies made of gingerbread, glued together with docé de leite, and then covered in dark chocolate. I hope that description is enough to get you to book your ticket to Saó Paulo.