Aveiro The Colorful City - Oh so Charming!

Nicknamed the Venice of Portugal for its beautiful network of canals that wind their way through the city, Aveiro is at once unique and typically charming. Every street is lined with wonderful examples of Portuguese architecture, from idyllic white-washed Mediterranean houses to traditional azulejo façades made of glazed ceramic tiles painted in an astonishing variety of colours and patterns. The town is a perfect walker’s paradise, with small bridges, quaint courtyards and inviting beaches around every corner, waiting to be discovered.

Typical fisherman nests to sell the fish

Loved this picturesque coffee shop

Aveiro is a dynamic, mid-size city, located on the Atlantic coast of Portugal. Is surrounded by salt-flats, beaches and lagoons and dominated by the Central Canal running through town.

In the canals you can find the moliceiro, a traditional boat painted with bright colours and with often ingenious and humorous decorations. It has about 75,000 residents and offers much of what characterizes the big cities. Aveiro is equally a prosperous city of commerce and services, as well as a centre of culture and leisure, inserted in a region of high industrial development.

There are several attractions in the city of Aveiro, including cathedrals, canals and several beaches in the neighborhood, such as Barra, Costa Nova do Prado, and São Jacinto. Attractions near Aveiro also include the famous Ílhavo ceramic of Vista Alegre.

Those who appreciate good food can taste the delicious eel stew and a variety of sea and lagoon fish soups. But Aveiro is specially known for its sweets: the most famous is ovos moles (soft eggs), sweetened egg yolk in candied casings shaped like fish or barrels.

The salt-pans and its natural spa

The salt-pans are part of the history and typical landscape of Aveiro. The Troncalhada, an eco-musem located in one of the canals, is one of the places where you can watch the salt workers – marnotos – scraping the crystalized salt with their traditional tools, gathering it into a small pail and adding it to a large mound resemble pyramids glistening in the bright sun. While they work, you can spoil yourself in the salty pool and the salty Spa, taking advantage of their therapeutic properties of high salt concentration.

RIA DE AVEIRO and the surrounding buildings

All the moliceiros (boats) lined up waiting for tourists

Beautiful Street Art under the bridge

Aveiro Beach

Barra, 9km south of Aveiro, is reached first and the beach comes with a range of (pricey) accommodation, restaurants and nightclubs as well as a municipal campsite.

Costa Nova, 3km south of Barra, is mostly famous for its colourful striped houses, squashed onto a tiny strip of land between the beach and the lagoon. Slightly less commercial than Barra, there is still the inevitable spread of newer concrete buildings, as well as a huge campsite with its own supermarket and disco.