Things to do in Fortaleza
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Praia do Futuro
Fortaleza's best beach, Praia do Futuro is a clean length of sand that stretches 5km (3.1mi) south along Av Dioguinho to the Clube Caça e Pesca (Hunting and Fishing Club). It is easily the city's best beach, though it's a fair way from most hotels. Barracas (kiosks) serving crab and beer line the beach, which gets packed on weekends. It doesn't start getting really nice until you're at least 1km (0.6mi) away from the industrial port.
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Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura
An excellent modern cultural center, the Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura includes museums, cinemas, theatres, galleries, a good café and a planetarium in an extensive complex with elevated walkways joining blocks on different streets. It blends well with the surrounding older buildings, many of which have been restored to house bars, restaurants and artisans' workshops. It's a successful social focus for the city, very popular with locals especially on weekends.
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Vira Verão
Praia do Futuro is lined with enormous barracas, some with hundreds of tables under sunshades on the sand. It’s good for seafood meals and snacks – pargo assado (grilled red snapper) with salad is a favorite dish here. Vira Verão boasts a sea of golden-tanned goodness under coconut tree palapas (thatched-roof hut) on any given day, a requisite stop for surfers, windsurfers, kitesurfers and pretty much everyone else who owns a revealing swimsuit.
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Engarrafamento
The name means ‘traffic jam, ’ and that’s just what you’ll get at the door of this fun middle-class venue for live pagode (popular samba music), Música Popular Brasileira (MPB), forró and pop/rock. It looks little more than a restaurant from the outside, but inside it’s near disco-like, teeming with cool kids knocking back buckets of cheap Skol and picking at tasty bar food. Worth the R$15 taxi fare, especially on Sundays.
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Nordeste Off Road
This agency offers longer-distance 4WD or beach-buggy tours, along Ceará’s glorious beaches wherever possible, as far afield as Jericoacoara or even Natal or the Lençóis Maranhenses. A three-day return trip to Jericoacoara costs around R$1700 to R$1950 for two people, with accommodations and outings from Jeri included; a four-day one-way jaunt to Natal is around R$2200 to R$4250 for two. These trips can be done in less time for less money.
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Parque Ecológico do Côco
Parque Ecológico do Côco was set up in 1991 after local ecological groups pressed for protection of the mangrove swamps from encroaching highways and the industrial zone. It's Fortaleza's most popular recreational park, and organizes activities to promote environmental awareness in its visitors. A boat tour along the Río Côco will allow you to fully appreciate the park's wildlife and unique flora.
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Coco Bambu
This huge and festive eatery is one of those ridiculous Brazilian restaurants that does a whole lot of everything and – one would think – not a whole lot well. Oh no, not here. The 14-page menu covers pizza, tapioca, crêpes, sushi and regional mains (as well as por-kilo for lunch) but here’s the rub: everything is excellent, including the clientele, which is always a bit raucous with Fortaleza’s finest.
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Santa Clara Café Orgânico
Santa Clara is one of the city’s hot ‘ Pontos de Encontros, ’ which loosely translated means where hot people go to mingle. It’s a wonderful little café serving organic Joe, sandwiches, wraps, waffles (despite its 3pm opening time), cheesecake, tapioca and a plethora of fancier coffee drinks. It’s located on the upper level of Dragão do Mar.
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50 Sabores
Ice cream heaven, though with a terribly misleading name: there are actually 100 flavors here, including caipirinha (made with cachaça, a white spirit made from sugarcane – you must be 18 to purchase!), beer flavor, crispy cheese and cream corn, among loads of Brazilian fruits and more classic options. It’s absolutely wonderful.
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Café Pagliuca
Fortaleza’s most bohemian live venue is a sophisticated café offering jazz (Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday), tango (Thursday) and bossa jazz (Saturday) from 9pm. It also does a good feijoada with a free caipirinha on Saturdays from noon (R$23). It skews 30-something-plus and draws artists, musicians and intellectuals.
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Teatro José de Alencar
Dating from 1910, the Teatro José de Alencar is an impressive building - a pastel-colored hybrid of classical and Art Nouveau architecture, which was constructed with cast-iron sections imported from Scotland. It is now used for cultural events and is worth a visit in the evenings, especially Friday and Saturday nights.
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Mucuripe Club
In addition to being the best and most stylish disco in the Northeast, Mucuripe is a mind-blowingly huge, modern, nontouristy venue with a dinner club and five different dance areas where you skirt between techno or forró, live rock and pop or jazz. If you lose a friend in here, they’ll see you tomorrow.
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Pirata Bar
Long-standing Pirata is famous for its 'segunda-feira mais louca do planeta' (craziest Monday on the planet). The pirate ship-themed spot stages hours of live forró and other Brazilian rhythms for the packed crowd to dance through the night. The surrounding bars also get very lively.
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Vojnilô
With a confusing Macedonian name and under-the-radar appeal, this subtly maritime-themed restaurant won top seafood accolades in the city in 2009. The seafood spaghetti (R$59), topped with two whole langostas (small lobsters), and the house whole fish in caper sauce are both phenomenal.
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Clube do Vaqueiro
For more of a sertão (backlands of the Northeast) experience, try this enormous, cowboy-themed forró club where five different bands play on Saturday nights. It's popular with students. The Vaqueiro is out on the city's southeast outskirts, and best reached by taxi.
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Mercado Central
Mainly geared to a tourist clientele, the three-story Central Market has good prices at more than 500 stalls selling everything from hammocks and leather bags to excellent local cashews and a huge variety of cachaça – some bottles have fruit salad or crabs pickled inside.
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Buoni Amici's
The Dragão do Mar area has several open-air restaurant/bars where people flock for evening drinks and to see what live music, street theater or other action starts up. Amici's is an attraction in itself with Brazilian music (live or DJ) from about 21:00 Thursday to Sunday.
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Museu do Ceará
There are some good exhibits on the state's history and anthropology at the Museu do Ceará, including a display on the four fishermen who sailed from Praia de Iracema to Rio in 1941 to bring their life of 'misery and suffering' to the attention of the Federal Government.
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Órbita
Reminiscent of a college town rock club (with way better looking people than your college or ours), the large, black-and-purple Dragão do Mar bar hosts live reggae, rock, surf and samba rock amid snooker tables and a legion of flirtatious upper-class clientele.
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Restaurante La Marea
Good two-level grill house on Iracema's 'restaurant corner', with meat cooked over red-hot coals. They'll grill the picanha (Brazil's favorite cut of beef comes from the cow's rump and is eaten pinkish, salty and fresh from the grill) at your table.
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Cemoara
This is a renowned seafood restaurant, with no shorts or sandals allowed. It boasts some of the best seafood dishes in the city, but still has reasonable prices for what you get. Try the fish in mussel sauce; you won't be disappointed.
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Colher de Pau
This is one of the best places on a street lined with good-value, medium-range restaurants, many of them started by waiters from fancier places elsewhere in Fortaleza. It’s consistently voted the best in town for regional cuisine.
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Crocobeach
The huge barracas on Praia do Futuro open on Thursday evenings for nights of live music, dancing and a crab feast. Crocobeach is the most fun, with comedy acts as well as music.
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Memorial da Cultura Cearense
The Memorial da Cultura Cearense is a museum dedicated to the popular culture of Ceará. Free capoeira lessons are given at 6pm Tuesday and Friday under the planetarium.
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Café Crème
Crème is one of the main restaurants at Dragão do Mar, with tables out front for watching the action. The pizza rodízio (smorgasbord) is unbeatable value.
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