January 14 - 17, 2015

Aveiro is a seaport city just over two hours north of Lisbon by train. Most tourists visit the beaches here during the summer. Our reason for visiting this particular city was to meet another family friend.

We rented an apartment in the center of town located a short cab ride from the train station. The lovely host couple, Helder & Carmo, showed us around the apartment which was situated above a language school. It was perfect. The husband is an architect and creatively planned out the attic-like space. There was even a great loft spot for Liam.

Once settled, we took a walk around town. Aveiro has been referred to as the Portuguese Venice because it has a system of canals. Even though it was January, we did see a few people taking gondola-type boat rides. Aveiro is much smaller than Venice, but it's definitely quaint and colorful.

Variety of shops and cafes in town right by the apartment

We were definitely falling in love with Portugal. Our first day was lovely, especially considering it was January. Definitely my kind of winter. It did get a bit rainy after that. We still went out to explore and checked out the local mall across a canal. It had a theater and we decided to see our first movie since we embarked on our adventure. We purchased tickets to see Boyhood and were fascinated to find out that we had to select our seats at that time. The cashier showed us a seating chart and which seats had already been selected and then we chose our desired available seats. It seems most of Europe and Asia worked that way.

On the following day we arranged to meet our family friend, Anibal Paião, owner of Pascoal & Filhos, SA and the Santa Maria Manuela. Anibal was kind enough to pick us up and take us to his office which was alongside the SMM.

The SMM is a four masted schooner that was part of the Portuguese White Fleet. Anibal purchased the vessel when it was in poor shape and spent several years restoring it to its former glory. It is now used for various cultural and tourist activities. It is a gorgeous vessel that has been painstakingly restored.

The skipper gave us a guided tour that told us much about the history and current activities of the vessel.

After our tour, Anibal and his son took us to an amazing restaurant for lunch. Clearly this area is known for its seafood, so I think they were a bit surprised when we informed them that two of us were vegetarian. We enjoyed lunch and getting to know each other.

After our time at the docks, Anibal arranged a tour of the Maritime Museum.

The Maritime Museum was beautiful and well operated. We had a lovely couple of hours checking out the displays.

We loved our short visit to Aveiro. Our hosts made sure we got back to the train on time. They were incredibly sweet. Carmo enjoyed reading our blog and we even became Facebook friends. I am just sorry it took me so long to write about our time in Aveiro. I definitely recommend a visit there if ever in Portugal. We think of our time there fondly especially when we recently saw a ship in the St. John's harbour from Aveiro. Portugal and Newfoundland share a common bond to the fishing tradition.