boa vinda a salvador

i woke up bright & early this morning to watch us pull into Salvador. It was pretty hazy so my pictures didn't come out so great, but I got a nice series of photos of the ship being tied up:









and the gangway being lowered:



I took an urban architecture tour which took us out to places in the city I would have never seen on foot. Government buildings (cold war architecture, there's a bunker underneath):







a very cool church:



favelas (slums):





the city of Salvador is built as a lower city (where the ship came in) and an upper city. I took the elevator to the upper city with some professor-folks and we watched Carnaval start to gear up for the evening. I'll be at Carnaval tomorrow night and it was starting to rain hard, so we didn't stay terribly long. The elevator was fun. It's literally an elevator that prevents you from having to scale the wall ... or take the stairs ... to the upper city. There's also a funicular which I'll need to try out. We've been given strict instructions about not taking the stairs. We've also been given strict instructions to stay in groups and to go nowhere alone. I didn't feel unsafe today. There were definitely a lot of people around -- 2 million for Carnaval -- but it just feels big-city-like. I can't tell how serious they are about this. I definitely want to roam around the upper city tomorrow and I'll see if I can find other folks going in that direction, but I don't want lack-of-group to keep me from exploring. A few city & Carnaval photos (I've added more to the map):