Fortaleza

A long beach east of the centre lined with big beach restaurants called barracas. On Thursday nights the custom is crab and live music, so it is packed even midweek.

A promenade along the city's seafront where a craft fair spreads out every evening. After dark, walkers and stalls crowd it until late.

A cultural complex planted amid the old dockside warehouses, its museum, planetarium and theatres linked by curving walkways. The warehouses around it now hold bars and venues, crowded on weekend nights.

A four-storey building with shops stacked along spiral ramps, selling hammocks, lace and cashews. The same goods are priced differently floor to floor, so ask at a few before you buy.

A theatre opened in 1910, known for an Art Nouveau iron front shipped from Scotland. The garden beside it is the work of landscape designer Burle Marx, and guided tours pass through the auditorium and up onto the main stage.

A west-coast fishing village where reliable wind lines the beach with kitesurfing schools. Behind the village, buggies race over the dunes to a lagoon.

A village down the east coast where red sandstone cliffs look out over the sea. A crescent moon and star carved into the cliff is its emblem, and the main street, known as Broadway, fills with open bars at night.

A village within a national park some 300 km west, where the final stretch is a sandy track covered in four-wheel drive. Every evening people climb the big dune and watch the Atlantic swallow the sun.

A Gothic-style cathedral completed in 1978 after some 40 years of work, big enough to hold 5,000 people. Toward late afternoon the stained glass spills colour across the floor between the pews.

A large water park on Porto das Dunas beach in Aquiraz, east of the city, famous for Insano, a 41 m slide. In high season, booking online cuts the queue at the gate.

An old iron pier reaching out from Iracema Beach, begun in the 1920s for shipping but never used by ships. Now a promenade, it fills at dusk as people crowd the rail at its tip to face the sun sinking over open sea.

A fish market on Mucuripe beach, right beside the sand where jangada rafts come ashore. Choose fish or prawns from a stall, have them weighed, and the small kitchens behind will fry or grill your purchase on the spot.

A large ecological park that follows the Coco River deep into town, with boardwalks and paths through mangrove. A few blocks from the beachfront towers you reach mudflats scuttling with crabs, and locals walk here early in the morning.

A village on the Beberibe coast to the east, where a maze of gullies winds between sandstone cliffs streaked in many colours by wind and rain. Local artisans tamp that sand into glass bottles layer by layer to make landscape pictures for sale.

A small hill town in the Baturite range to the southwest, its air far fresher than the shore's, so Fortaleza residents drive up at weekends to dodge the heat. Shade-grown coffee farms survive in the forest, and afternoon mist often rolls over the ridges.

A beach at Paraipaba to the west, famous for the view down from the bluff over a bay thick with coconut palms. A freshwater lagoon lies beyond the dunes behind the sand, so buggy tours visit sea and lagoon in turn.