Aveiro: Portugal's Venice?

A moliceiro

The main destination of our summer trip to Portugal was Aveiro. Since it has several canals and its own type of boat, it is often called the Venice of Portugal. No offence to Venice, but I enjoyed Aveiro way more! Probably due to the fact that even in mid August it was not overrun with tourists. The majority of languages we overheard were Portuguese with some French and Spanish thrown in. So while there certainly were people visiting from out-of-town, you could tell you were still in Portugal. It also had lots of Art Nouveau buildings, which I liked.

Another difference in Aveiro: the affordability of a boatride. Venice has its gondolas, Aveiro its moliceiros. I'm not sure what the going rate is for a private gondola tour nowadays, but we paid a little over 10€ each for a moliceiro ride. Granted, it wasn't private. Moliceiros-- previously used to haul and harvest algae-- are more like a minibus in size. They are brightly painted, with the image of a famous person at the head, and a dirty joke at the back. Yet even in the company of 20 more passengers, it was a pleasant ride along Aveiro's few canals. There's another difference: Aveiro only has a handful of canals which are sourced by the neighboring lagoon. On our moliceiro ride we passed under the colorful Friendship Bridge, passed by the salina, and turned around in front of the old ceramic factory. Much more interesting than your run-of-the-mill walking tour. 

Colorful ribbons hung on the Friendship Bridge

After seeing the salina from afar, we checked it out up close and personal. There is a free eco-museum where you can walk around the platforms yourself. The salt collects as the water drains out. It just happened to be close to salt-harvesting time, because a man was hard at work spreading the salt with a shovel. Across the street there is a private salina. For a few euros you get access to their salty beach and spa. The beach was really muddy, and we saw some people slathering it all over themselves. Must have some curative properties. Because of the high salt content, you floated a little more than in regular water. It wasn't too noticeable to me, though. The spa was a very shallow section with warm, pink water. Nice, except lying on salt isn't very comfortable. Ouch, poking crystals! 

Salt spa. Note the piles of salt in the background

Saltworker Statue.
The main canal at night

As in the rest of Portugal, we ate well and inexpensively in Aveiro. One jawdroppingly cheap place was within a mall, but we got there relatively early and snagged a table on its terrace facing the canal. For FIVE EUROS we got a soup, a drink, a choice of meat or fish dish, a dessert, and a coffee. Unbelievable! As we were finishing up, the line went all the way down the stairs. It certainly wasn't the tastiest food on the trip, but for 5€ what more could you ask for? Given our extremely cheap lunch, for dinner we ¨splurged¨ on a nice meal. At twilight we found a small terrace on a quiet side street. Quiet except for the soothing jazz musician playing nearby. Here we went all out with a scrumptious shrimp curry dish and a bottle of vinho verde, a typical white wine from a little further north in Portugal. 

And as far as sweets go, Aveiro's typical treat is ovo mole. It's an eggy (and very yellow-orange) sweet liquid inside of wafers. They have wafers of all shapes and sizes. We went for some barrel- and fish-shaped ovos moles. A bit too sweet for me, if you can believe it!