Vitória

We ventured over to Vitória on Thursday afternoon to check out the historical part of town and then again on Saturday night to eat at the highly recommended Churrascaria Gramado. There are several interesting buildings, but generally we weren't overly impressed with Vitória. They have a nice 5 km of beachfront at Praia do Camburi, but, because it is a port city, all the ships make it feel rather polluted and not a place I would want to get in the water. The beach is also deserted at night (or at least is was on Saturday night). We've heard the nightlife is pretty good in the triangle area of Vitória, but we never got around to checking it out. Walking on the beach in Vila Velha in the evenings sounded more our speed for this trip!

This is Anchieta Palace which was founded in 1500's as a Jesuit College. It is now a government building.

The walk up all the stairs to the building is really pretty and landscaped nicely.
A couple other old buildings we came across (they really have a thing with yellow here).
This is the Catedral Metropolitana: an absolutely stunning building. They were having a service on Thursday for Corpus Christi when we were there. We went in for part of the service, and they have gorgeous stained glass windows. I would have liked to have gotten some pictures, but something about snapping pictures in the middle of a church service just seems wrong.
The detail work is gorgeous.
There is a series of stairs leading straight up to Catedral Metropolitana.
It's hard to see in the picture, but that is the cathedral at the very, very top. After the red stairs there are yellow stairs, and then you reach the top of the hill.

I don't know what this building is, but, if restored, I think is would be really awesome.
Besides the main big port in Vitória, there are lots of smaller ones scattered around and many are built right into the hillsides.
And then the highlight of the trip, for my husband at least, was this:
He went dashing over with the camera to take a picture, and I heard him exclaim something in excitement. I was expecting something really incredible. And then he said, "See? Grain bins!" And this, my friends, is the sort of thing you get when you marry a boy from Iowa. You take him all the way to Brasil and he gets more excited about grain bins than anything else. ;)