Lodging Review: Pousada Dona Zilah, Sao Paulo
I highly recommend Pousada Dona Zilah. I was all set to go back to hostel living, but I was also determined to stay in the Jardins neighborhood for its relative safety and easy access to restaurants and shopping. My new litmus test for any lodging choice is "close enough to walk to dinner, and safe enough to walk home afterwards."
The room I got was really basic. I mean, just look at this picture. The bathroom was even slightly worse, and the window opened onto the back of the kitchen, so I could hear the breakfast preparations from very early in the morning.
But what a breakfast to wake up to! They always had some standards, like cold cuts, cheeses, a potato+ham casserole, sausage+onion saute, and breads. But every morning, I'd look forward to something new, like a new flavor of breakfast bread (they always had a selection of 4-5 out, e.g. yogurt or pumpkin). Or one day they had avocado puree in wine goblets. Their selection of 2-3 fruit juices always changed, like one day there would be pineapple+lemongrass, another day there would be lemon+mint. They also always had a great selection of fruit, like persimmon (March=autumn remember!), starfruit, guava. It was like going to a really cute cafe every morning, which shouldn't have been surprising since it did operate as a regular restaurant for lunch and dinner. Remarkably, this spread was available from 7-11am, which are the absolute longest breakfast hours I've ever encountered in the world!
The women at the reception were generally all very friendly, and they do lock the doors at night and you have to buzz in so I felt pretty safe. The room even had a little wooden locker where you could use your own lock - a great benefit. And there was a (sometimes unreliable) wifi connection for free. For the awesome location in Jardins (only a few blocks from Avenida Paulista in one direction, and a few blocks to Rua Oscar Freire in the other), the price (~$60/night), wifi, and the breakfast, I was very, very happy with Pousada Dona Zilah.
If this place is full, or if you are put off by the condition of the room, in my walks around the neighborhood I saw several Mercure hotels and an Ibis hotel that were well situated. On the Accor hotels website, the Mercure hotels will be listed in the Jardins neighborhood, but the Ibis will be in the Avenida Paulista neighborhood. There's a Formule 1 that will also be listed in Jardins, but this is on the very southern border of the neighborhood and fronting a major road, so I would not recommend this hotel. Of course, if you're willing to spend much more money, there's the Renaissance hotel a couple blocks away from the Pousada, and the ultra-luxury boutique hotels Fasano and Emiliano are in the neighborhood too.
