Estação Sorocabana (Sorocabana Station)

Ok Ione, it works. :)

Estação Sorocabana, officially called "Júlio Prestes" since 1951, is the most beautiful and well known train station in the city.

Built in 1875, it's gone through some rough times and has been recently renovated; it is now adapted to be the home of a theater - which meets international standards - where the state sinphonic orchestra plays.

This one should show Avenida Paulista

I'm not even going to talk about Avenida Paulista and how's it's the financial center of São Paulo and how nice it looks and how much I like taking walks there. Because you can't really see the street. You get to see the trendy, fancy, neat clock I've got in my car though.

I thought I'd post this picture so it would work as a little something to make the other contributors post their nice pictures. Let's see if this works.

Congonhas Airport (CGH)

Airport stuff. I was in the car, so I couldn't actually take a picture of the airport itself. Ha! Is this crappy or what? A picture of airport stuff, and not the airport! Good job, Ione! You're really good at being bad.

It's an airport in the city for domestic flights only (it used to be an international airport in the old days, though). In the 30s, when it was built, 12 kilometers, the distance from CGH to Praça da Sé - the central point of the city - seemed like a huge distance and the surroundings of the airport were totally uninhabited. Not quite like it's today (take a look at it with Google Maps). In fact, it's a pretty dangerous business to have this airport in the city; in 1996, a Fokker 100 crashed into houses in a neighborhood close to the airport, killing everyone on the airplane, and 4 people on the ground. In 2004, 13,611,227 passengers flew into and out of Congonhas.

You can check more pictures at this site.

Vale do Anhangabaú

Hi. I'm Marcos and I work with technology. I started enjoying photography when I had to coordinate a team of photographers and Photoshoppers. Enjoying photography doesn't mean knowing about it, so don't listen to what Ione's said, ok? :)

I will start by showing some symbols of our city, by showing you a series of pictures I've taken for the celebration of São Paulo's 450th anniversary. I hope you like them.

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Vale do Anhangabaú (Anhangabaú Valley)

With gardens, pieces of art and 3 water fountains, Vale do Anhangabaú is a "postcard" scenery located downtown, from where you can see many postcard-like buildings, such as Martinelli, Banespa, Teatro Municipal (City Theater), Shopping Light (an old building where there is a shopping mall) and Matarazzo, where the city hall used to be located.

Due to its dimension, it is considered the perfect place for thousands of people to gather together. Among other public demonstrations that happened there is "Diretas Já", which took place on April 16, 1984. 1.5 million people attended such demonstration to fight for democracy. It is considered, to this day, the largest public demonstration to ever take place in Brazil.

View from my window

Hello, everyone. I'm Ione and I'm in charge of the crappy pictures that will be posted on this blog. I don't have a fancy camera, I only wish I could photoshop stuff, and I'm no photographer (I currently teach EFL - you're welcome to comment on my poor English though); so... that's okay if you think the pictures I post are bad. I promise I won't take offense. Marcos and Beth are the ones who will be posting the nice, artistic and well taken photographs. My job is to bring the quality of São Paulo Daily Photo down. So, here's the first one.



This is the view from my window (oh yeah, as if you haven't figured that out by reading the title). I live in a nice neighborhood - Vila Mariana - that has been being taken slowly by more and more apartment buildings. The church you can barely make out is 2 or 3 blocks from here. This picture was taken earlier today, when it stopped raining for, like, 10 seconds. With the end of summer, rain just won't stop pouring down. So it was a nice break from all the water, with the perfect timing. Oh, the sun. I had forgotten what it looked like.

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Also, as we publish more pictures, we'll be adding them to our pool on flickr.

Banespa

The building where Banespa Bank is located. One of the most famous "postcards" of our city, it's located downtown, or to use an expression we use in the city, centro velho.

On the left, the Banco do Brasil Bank building. On the right, Martinelli's Building.

(links in Brazilian Portuguese)

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Banespa Building was built from 1929 to 1947 to be the premises of the (then state) bank's main office. For 20 years, it was the highest building in the city. The top of the tower, where you have the most amazing panoramic view of the city, is open to public visitation.

Martinelli has been built in the 20s (1925 to 1929, to be more precise) and was then considered the highest skycraper in Latin America. With 30 floors, it's 130 meters high. In 1992, it was put under governmental trust.