By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2     

São Paulo can be fun. In fact, I would recommend giving up the beach for at least one weekend to spend a Sunday exploring the empty city center.

The last time I did this was last November. It was marvelous to see the municipal buildings up close. To take a look at the works of Aleijadinho on display in the elaborate old Bank of Brasil building. To walk through the mansion of the Marquesa dos Santos. To lunch in the patio of the Jesuit College. Even, rather bizarrely, to discover that a thigh bone of Padre José de Anchieta is displayed in the oratory just off the church's main entrance. All this with virtually no one around, so plenty of time to take it in.

This past Sunday began with a long walk in Ibirapuera Park, full of happy paulistanos, and dogs, and skateboarders, joggers and cyclists. The Army was there as well. The soldiers were demonstrating various rope pulley devices, which were hugely popular among the children. Then into the Afro Brazilian Museum: What an extraordinary collection this is, almost over-stuffed with marvels. There was recently an enormous and enormously expensive exhibition in Washington, DC, on the global encounters of the Portuguese. The galleries dedicated to India, China and Japan were excellent. But the section on Brazil was disappointing, focused on the well-known 17th century Dutch paintings of Pernambuco by Post and Eckhout and the overexposed Brazilian colonial baroque. The contents of any one of the sections from the Ibirapuera Afro Brazilian Museum would have been infinitely more interesting.

In the late afternoon to the renovated Julio Prestes railroad station for a superb concert at the Sala São Paulo: Bach, Bartók and Bottesini, and several hundred classical music enthusiasts there to enjoy the music. Afterwards from the erudite concert hall to the street: To the Largo do Arouche and the Avenida Vieira de Carvalho, for a delicious boneless galeto and chope. Outside the restaurant a good humored informal parade of muscular (and not so muscular) gays and transvestites and lesbians of all classes, ethnicities, and ages, walking up and back in a manner that used to characterize the evening "footing" along Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana in Rio in the 1960s, but which has long since died.

Altogether a delightful Sunday in São Paulo.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper