Aveiro Portugal

Following cause I missed this town on my recent second trip to lovely Portugal

We spent 2 nights there on a Road Scholar tour. We did one of the boat rides - it was nothing special. It's an okay city - whether or not it's worth a visit really depends on how much time you have in other places and if you're traveling by car etc.

We did a day trip to Coimbra from there and we spent one afternoon walking around Aveiro itself. It was probably our least interesting stop on the Portugal tour. I'd certainly prioritize Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Sintra, Evora, and the Duoro Valley.

We took a quick peek and moved on.

We stopped there when we had a car. It's not the "Venice of Portugal" except that there is a waterway and very touristy boats that you can ride. There were actually a lot of tourists there, so someone earned their money when they marketed this town. Okay town and there's a nice market to buy local crafts, but that's about it. If you have a car, you can stop for an hour or so, but I wouldn't go out of my way for the town. It's nice enough, but nothing special, especially compared to everything else that you can see that is so much nicer.

Definitely not Venice. It has two channels where the tourist oriented boat tours navigate. One has the town on one side and a long parking lot on the other while the other heads out towards the ocean along marshland. The historic center is rather small. We walked around for an hour in September last year and saw everything we wanted. At that time a large area along the channel in the historic center was a construction zone so we didn’t leave with a great impression of the town. We had a rental car.

Thanks everyone for your input... much appreciated. I've rerouted us to stay overnight in Coimbra rather than Aveiro and just stop in to get out of the car to stretch our legs in Aveiro on our way to Porto. If anyone's looking I found some great hotels in Coimbra on booking.com when we'll be passing through near the end of March. Thanks again.

We enjoyed Coimbra. As an fyi, there’s a cafe beside the cathedral, Cafe Santa Cruz that has free nightly fado performances at 6pm and 10pm if you’re so inclined. The cafe is cash only.

I stayed 2 nights/1 full day in Aveiro. It was pleasant enough but not the best use of my time. If you do stop for a couple hours, the things I enjoyed were the art nouveau style buildings (near the canal), a small art nouveau museum, and nice restaurants with very fresh fish from the local fish market. Costa Nova beach is 10-15 minutes drive out of town and supposed to be nice. Unfortunately for me, it started pouring rain just as I got to the beach (by bus) so I left. The Julie Dawn Fox website was helpful for things to do in and around Aveiro.

Thanks Jaimee! We'll definitely check it out! :)

Hi CD,
Thanks for the great ideas and the website to check. We'll definitely take a look! :)