Day 37: Coimbra to Porto via Aveiro
Disclaimer: All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all?
We're slowly catching up with travels in the last few days - and this posting details (briefly) the drive from Coimbra to Porto. Driven directly, this would have just taken a little over an hour and a quarter, so again we diverted on the way to look at a town where we'd stayed on our first trip in 1988: Aveiro.
But on the way, we were 'distracted' by the cute fisher people's cottages on the Costa Nova do Prado, particularly on Av. José Estevão in Gafanha da Encarnação, just south of Aveiro, so stopped here for a wander:
While we were there, we decided to have lunch in a restaurant in one of these houses, looking out onto the lagoon from the narrow spit of land along the coast:
Lunch was its usual gastronomic affair:
including a large pot of seafood:
After lunch, it was onwards the short distance into Aveiro - as charming as ever, but now really exploiting its reputation as the 'Venice of Portugal' ... hmm, not sure that a lagoon and a river delivers that:
And so to Porto. We've only been here briefly before (again in that neanderthal trip) and that was to do the laundry. (For some reason, we were referred here from where we were staying further north - apparently because Porto had in those times the only coin-operated public laundromat in this part of Portugal. This has coloured our perceptions of what Porto has to offer. We look forward to expanding those experiences.)
We've booked a more modern apartment this time in a quiet one-way 'suburban' street:
Despite the place's renovation, it retains the façade of typical Portuguese tiles:
It has a lift:
that took us up to the first floor apartment with its lounge:
modern kitchen (yet to be stocked by us) with our own washing machine!!:
bathroom (a walk-in shower this time, rather than climbing into a bath):
and a bedroom that looks out onto a balcony:
Yes! A balcony again, but the view is just over the parking yard - which provides secure (if tight) off-street parking:
We look forward to a long weekend here, exploring the city - but we'll tell you all about that in a few days.
We're slowly catching up with travels in the last few days - and this posting details (briefly) the drive from Coimbra to Porto. Driven directly, this would have just taken a little over an hour and a quarter, so again we diverted on the way to look at a town where we'd stayed on our first trip in 1988: Aveiro.
But on the way, we were 'distracted' by the cute fisher people's cottages on the Costa Nova do Prado, particularly on Av. José Estevão in Gafanha da Encarnação, just south of Aveiro, so stopped here for a wander:
including a large pot of seafood:
And so to Porto. We've only been here briefly before (again in that neanderthal trip) and that was to do the laundry. (For some reason, we were referred here from where we were staying further north - apparently because Porto had in those times the only coin-operated public laundromat in this part of Portugal. This has coloured our perceptions of what Porto has to offer. We look forward to expanding those experiences.)
We've booked a more modern apartment this time in a quiet one-way 'suburban' street:
Despite the place's renovation, it retains the façade of typical Portuguese tiles:
It has a lift:
that took us up to the first floor apartment with its lounge:
modern kitchen (yet to be stocked by us) with our own washing machine!!:
bathroom (a walk-in shower this time, rather than climbing into a bath):
and a bedroom that looks out onto a balcony:
Yes! A balcony again, but the view is just over the parking yard - which provides secure (if tight) off-street parking:
We look forward to a long weekend here, exploring the city - but we'll tell you all about that in a few days.
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