Brazil (São Paulo State)
Santos
SANTOS was founded in 1535, a few kilometres east of São Vicente, one of Portugal’s first New World settlements. The city stands on an island, its port facilities and old town facing landwards with ships approaching by a narrow, but deep, channel. In a dilapidated kind of way, the compact centre retains a certain charm that has not yet been extinguished by the development of an enormous port complex.
Arriving in Santos and getting oriented couldn’t be easier. The Rodoviária, at Praça dos Andradas, is within easy walking distance of everywhere in Centro, on the north side of the island: from it, walk across the square to Rua XV de Novembro, one of the main commercial streets. One block on, turn left at Rua do Comércio, along which are the remains of some of Santos’ most distinguished buildings. Sadly, only the facades remain of most of the mid- and late nineteenth-century former merchants’ houses that line the street, but the elaborate tiling and wrought-iron balconies offer a hint of their lost grandeur.

At the end of Rua do Comércio is the train station, built between 1860 and 1867, and, while the city’s claim that the station is an exact replica of London’s Victoria is a bit difficult to swallow, it is true that the building wouldn’t look too out of place in a British town. 

Next to the station in Largo Marquês de Monte Alegre is the Igreja de Santo Antônio do Valongo (Mon–Sat 8.30–11.30am and 2–7pm, Sun 8am–6pm), built in 1641 in colonial Baroque style but with its interior totally “restored” over the following centuries. Back on Rua XV de Novembro, at no. 95, is the Bolsa de Café (Tues–Sat 9am–5pm, Sun 10am–5pm), where coffee prices are fixed and the quality assessed. And at the end of the street is another Baroque building, the Convento do Carmo, again sixteenth-century in facade only.

Across town from Centro on the south side of the island, twenty minutes by bus from Praça Mauá by Rua do Comércio, are Santos’ beaches. They’re huge, stretching around the Atlantic-facing Baía de Santos, and are attractive in a Copacabana kind of way. The problem, though, is that while the beaches themselves are kept tidy the water is of doubtful cleanliness; stick to the sands.

Practicalities
Coming from São Paulo, be sure to remember that buses to Santos leave from the Jabaquara Rodoviária and not from Tietê. In Santos, there are tourist offices at the Rodoviária in Centro, and at the corner of Avenida Ana Costa and the seafront Avenida Presidente Wilson in Gonzaga, but their opening hours are very haphazard. Changing money in Santos is easy, with banks on Praça da República in Centro and on Rua XV de Novembro.

Hotels in Santos are concentrated in Gonzaga, a bairro of apartment buildings, restaurants and bars alongside the beach, facing the Baía de Santos. Good places include the comfortable Gonzaga, at Av. Presidente Wilson 36 (tel 013/244-1411; $20–35), the once grand, but now rather decrepit, Avenida Palace (tel 013/289-3555; $35–50) at no. 10 on the same avenue, and the Ritz, set back at Av. Marechal Deodoro 24 (tel 013/284-1171; $35–50). There are some reasonable seafood restaurants in Centro (try Café Paulista at Praça Rui Barbosa 8, or Rocky at Praça dos Andradas 5), but otherwise they are almost all in Gonzaga. For souvenir hunters, the most distinctive local items are embroideries, the product of the descendants of immigrants who came to Santos in the late nineteenth century from the Portuguese island of Madeira. The best source is the Unidade Regional de Produção do Morro de São Bento, Largo do São Bento 120, near the Igreja do Valongo in Centro (tel 013/222-2211).