Venice of Portugal, March 26, 2023

 Yesterday we took it easy and lazed around the apartment doing laundry, reading and caught up with emails before getting out in the afternoon and headed down to the waterfront to soak up the sun and people watch.  It was a very relaxing day.  Today we are heading out to Aveiro, which we read about in our travel book and it sounded like an interesting place to visit.  It's 76km south of Porto so it was a short drive to get there.  Aveiro is a popular tourist destination famed for its canals, art nouveau architecture and colorfully painted moliceiros boats.  The city lies at the edge of the Ria de Aveiro, a saltwater lagoon that was historically famed for its seaweed, salt and bountiful fish.  We toured the town for several hours and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as there was a huge flea market going on in the center of old town.  We had to get back to Porto as we had a reservation at Mind the Glass, a bistro specializing in Portuguese hot pots and local wines.  It is a very relaxed place and we felt right at home there.  For dinner we split an appetizer of Tuna Tartar and Rita had a hot pot of shrimp and pasta in a tomato sauce and I had a hot pot of cod with potatoes, cream and egg.  It all went down very well with a bottle of local white wine.   

The colorful moliceiros boats now take tourists on 45 minute rides through the canals.  In the past they were used to collect seaweed from the saltwater lagoon.

Aveiro is also a university town and a tradition for the international students is to write positive messages in their native language on these colorful plastic strands and place them on one of the bridges that cross the canals.

This beautifully decorated art nouveau house in the old quarter used to be privately owned but is now an art nouveau museum.

The tiny church of Sao Goncalinho was built in 1714 by fishermen living in the Beira-Mar district who wanted to honor Saint Goncalinho who is affectionately known as "our boy" .  He is said to cure illnesses of the bone, sort out marital problems, be a peacemaker of conflicts and a joker.  Sounds like a fun guy to know.   

The Beira-Mar district was where the fishermen lived and the homes were built in a much plainer style.  Today, many of these homes have been renovated and rented out to tourists.

We stopped for coffee at Café Central at the edge of one of the canals and soaked up the sun as we watched the boats meander by before heading back home.

On the way back to Porto we stopped at a very small village called Valega to take in the Valega Church, regarded as one of the most beautiful churches in Portugal.  It is a true masterpiece of the tile painting art and has been described as the "Portuguese Sistine Chapel".  It looks stunning in person and there was nobody around but Rita and I while we were there. 

The interior walls are also covered in colorfully painted tiles that depict the different stages of the life of Virgin Mary and the ceiling is decorated with exotic woods. Definitely worth a visit. 










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