Keeping Our Cool: Aveiro 2024, Part 2

You can’t stay for too long in Aveiro if you like to stay active – there definitely are things to see but not a lot of them. We’ve been here before and seen some of the biggest/flashiest sites within the city; we also plan to come back every so often to escape the heat, so we don’t necessarily want to see everything too quickly. For this trip we had some definite targets in mind, focusing on some of the smaller “niche” museums within the city. On day one we popped into the Art Nouveau Museum plus a dinner experience, and today we’d venture into another very focused exhibition along with dinner at an early contender for “favorite restaurant in Aveiro.”

Our next toe-dip into the cultural offerings in Aveiro took us to the Aveiro City Museum. We went through a teeter totter of “met-expectations” on this trip. The Art Nouveau Museum had sounded really promising and had turned out to be… well, not bad, but very rudimentary. Meanwhile, we (ok, maybe it was John) had pretty minimal expectations for a “municipal museum” but it turned it to be an enjoyable and informative visit. First of all, the displays were top-notch. Like, seriously, there must be a cutting-edge museum-display designer who came of age in the salt flats, because Aveiro is lousy with ’em. In the pictured exhibit, for example, they’re got three concurrent timelines showing the local history, cultural advancements, and the events of greater Portugal. Plus, translations in English for us visitors. There were also samples of the “cultural costumes” that were worn by people who worked in the salt flats, which were cute and all until you read the signage and discovered that they were enforced uniforms (and quite expensive ones!) that the Fascist government demanded for “national pride” and, not coincidentally, kept the people under an economic lodestone. It won’t take you all day, but a visit to this museum is definitely worth a quiet morning or afternoon.

That evening, we took a walk to one of our favorite restaurants for us that, happily, is located in Aveiro: Laguna Boat Restaurant. It was a nice bit of unexpected context. When we first visited, not too long after we had moved to Portugal, we’d found this same walk a bit taxing, while on this visit we barely noticed it. Turns out, not owning a car and walking practically everywhere we go eventually pays dividends. Anyway, it’s a lovely walk along the canal and down almost to the lagoon. The restaurant is a converted boat; although it doesn’t go anywhere as far as we know it still makes for great ambiance.

The meal opened, as it often does in Portugal, with a trio of flavored butter (manteiga), olive oil (azeite), and a fish pate accompanied by assorted breads (a cesto de pao) which we enjoyed with a glass of the house sparkling wine. It was a nice way to open, the flavors very fresh and perfectly set off by the medium sweetness of the wine. For our main, J. had a loin of steak (lombo de novilho com molho marrare) prepared simply seasoned with salt, and cooked in butter and I had rooster fish (peixe Galo), also known as Dory, again simply prepared with a bit of butter and lemon. His steak was perfect, tender throughout, and just at the cusp of medium-rare. My fish was flaky and succulent. Each was accompanied with a few seasonal veggies and a kind of jasmine or basmati rice. My copa de vinho (glass of house wine) was 4,50eu and provided a refreshing counterpoint to the butteriness of the fish and rice. We finished our meal by sharing the national dish — mousse chocolate — and a glass of Noval Tawny Port (10 years). The mousse was good, but the port was outstanding.