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.

I’m not sure how much our readers know about Celsius temperatures, so here’s a good rule of thumb: if it sounds right above freezing in Fahrenheit, it’s $*&@ing hot in Celsius. (100° in F is 37-°ish in C; 0° in C is 32° in F.) So, when our weather apps showed nothing but solid yellow circles and numbers in the mid-to-high 30°s, we knew we were in trouble. We did our best to manage the heat for awhile; opening the windows up at night to air out, sealing the apartment up by 8 AM or so, judiciously placing our fans and, occasionally, huddling in the living room with the air conditioning turned on. But when the nights don’t drop below 23° it just isn’t ever *cool*.

Eventually we decided that we needed to get the heck outta town and made plans to escape for a couple of days. A quick perusal of places we thought we’d like to see, cross-referenced with weather forecasts, led to our booking a quick jaunt to the coastal town of Aveiro.

Turns out, this was a very good idea.

We left for the train station in Braga around noon; this is not at all unusual, as our sleeping and waking have been occurring at irregular hours thanks to the heat (and the managing thereof). We had two options, a commuter train with more stops that would take roughly 2.5 hours, or the zippier route with fewer stops that would have us there in about 90 minutes. We did that one. The ride is uneventful, which we’re still getting used to – outside of the Northeast of the United States there aren’t a lot of commuter routes that get a lot of use, but (as anybody who has been to Europe already knows) over here it is de rigueur*. The train station in Aveiro is at one end of an avenida that ends at the waterfront. It’s a lovely, 15 minute walk during which I decide it reminds me of the Champs-Élysées. This is a ridiculous thing to say – it’s a four lane street with some trees, not a world famous boulevard suitable for parading conquering armies. However. The Avenue Dr. Lourenço Peixinho is dead straight, with wide sidewalks between the road and the businesses that run along it, those sidewalks being broken up with frequent stands of trees. I can’t explain perfectly, it’s just one of those things I flashed on, ya know?

In any case, it was a straight shot to a lovely hotel that Lisa found – the Hotel Aveiro Palace. It’s centrally located in the Aveiro pedestrian zone and is also smack dab on the lagoon, so it has a lot going for it. The rooms themselves were tidy and comfortable if not overly large; I don’t have a formal review in mind but, in general, if you’re going to Aveiro you won’t be mad if you stayed there. The plan was to spend the afternoon checking out some easily accessible sights so we popped right back out and onto the streets. And the lagoon!

About the lagoon. Aveiro is known by some as “the Venice of Portugal.” I get why this is said, although I suspect the Aveiro tourism bureau is where you hear it the most. The thing is, the city is situated atop a lagoon… which can be toured in its entirety in a 45 minute boat ride. You don’t use the boats to get from point A to point B as you would in Venice; you take a single tour on them – the water ways simply aren’t pervasive enough to be much use in practical transport. That said, the boat tours look like a lot of fun.

We didn’t need a boat to get to our main destination, though – it was a teeeeny tiny walk to the Museum of Aveiro, principally home of the artifacts of Saint Joana, a Portuguese princess and quasi-nun (hang on, I’ll get there) who was canonized in the late 1600s, roughly 200 years after she died. Sidenote: if you’re into European art and history, even lapsed Presbyterians such as myself become passing familiar with Catholic lingo. Santa Joana Princesa retired to this convent in the 1400s. Due to… I dunno? “Rules.” Specifically the intersection of Catholic rules and Portuguese nobility rules; she couldn’t become a for realsies nun, but she apparently really liked it there and made up her own version of the holy orders, which she swore to and lived out the rest of her life there. Once she died, however, everybody was reminded that she was also royalty because she left piles of wealth to the order. It makes for a lovely museum with some truly amazing work done in the various chapels – wood carving, tile work, the works.

After leaving the museum and strolling for a bit, we arrived at our dinner reservation at Laguna. Honestly, I picked it primarily because of it’s location – Laguna is a boat docked in the lagoon. To be even more honest, I picked it from my list of potentials largely on photos that didn’t pan out – they have a bar and some seating on the roof, but apparently it’s not always in use and in fact, we were seated inside. Doesn’t matter; we had a fabulous meal. Laguna is one of those places where the proprietor cares passionately about every teeny bit of their menu, and it was all delicious. The manager also paired wines for Lisa that a) she never would have selected for herself and b) she adored. All in all it was a fantastic experience, and being on the water was great even behind glass.

After dinner we had a lovely walk back to our hotel, and by “lovely” I mean it was 19° with a steady breeze coming in off the water. Given that it was 30° back at home we counted this as a major win. We took our time, wiggling through the streets of the pedestrian area leading back, and then settled in for a long summer’s nap. The next day would be devoted to full-blown tourism!

*a french term that means “for shit’s sake you mean to say you’ve never seen a train before criminy and you people ran the world?