Today, I want to take you on a trip to São Paulo, where we visited last Friday, and I spoke at a really big event held by Casa e Jardim. As I said in my earlier post, home design and magazines are booming in Brazil, and this event showed it in spades. Not only was it a big fete, with over 200 people attending (and live translation via headphones for those that needed them), but the people we met were really cool, interesting people from the Brazilian design (and food) scene. Check out the pics and links below.

Sorry, I just had to include a few more shots of Rio.....

Night falling outside of Hotel Fasano at Ipanema

Plantain and crabmeat at Restaurante Espírito Santo, Santa Teresa

Sara eating what you just saw....

Casa e Jardim Links

• Photos of the event by Casa e Jardim
• Some moments of the event by Casa e Jardim
• Post on our arrival: Maxwell em terras brasileiras

Our room at the Sheraton in São Paulo. It was on the "Design" floor and this one was done by local designer, Simone Golcher.

Oh yes, a huge fire broke out our first morning at the favela (slum) across the road from the hotel. I was told this does NOT happen every day. It was a huge disaster as roughly five blocks of homes disappeared.

Before the event at the Grand Hyatt, there were many photo sessions. :-)

The hall was set up with all sorts of style chairs — over 200 in all.

The hall fills up. Simone Quintas, the editor in chief of Casa e Jardim is right in front. People LOVE her and what she's done with the magazine to make it more accessible to all sorts of people.

People We Met on The Panel

• Ana Luiza Trajano, chef, who gave us an astonishing lunch the next day at her restaurant, Brasil a Gosto
• Marcus Ferreira, furniture designer, who runs Decameron Design and Carbon Design
• Marcelo Rosenbaum, interior designer, who runs Rosenbaum Design and also stars in a very popular design television show in Brasil called Lar Doce Lar (Home Sweet Home), which transforms poor houses.

What did I talk about for almost an hour??? Everything. Since doing the new book tour in June, I've been telling the story of Apartment Therapy, from local design service in 2001 to blog network in 2010, which is both a personal story, but also a story of what is going on right now in design and online media. We've been on a remarkable ride with all of our readers over the past six years as people's passion for design and blogs has come together.

I shared stats and a look behind the scenes at what we do every day to publish posts seven days a week from early morning until late night. I also shared our commitment to being "of service" that underlies even all the fun stuff we do, and explained what I'm hoping we achieve in the next few years through this lens. I also shared some big, beautiful pics from the new book.

Marcus Ferreira, Ana Luiza Trajano, Marcelo Rosenbaum, myself and Chris Niklas moderating.

Dinner afterwards at Alex Atala's Dalva e Ditto, which is beautifully designed by Marcelo Rosenbaum

Two Cool Things We Did

• São Paulo Art Biennial — We went on opening day last weekend. While much of the art is extremely political and high concept, the pavilion is remarkable and there were many lovely pieces.
• Lunch at Brasil a Gosto was amazing

Our new room at the Sheraton... this one was sort of out of a Twilight movie....

At the Bienale!

@ Brasil a Gosto

Ana Luiza Trajano at the next table

Saying goodbye to Ana Luiza outside her restaurant. We got on the airplane home just a few hours later.