Menu de Almoço in Venice

After a quick visit to the Fatima Pilgrimage Centre in the daylight, we headed to Coimbra, a university town and home to the 2nd oldest university in Europe. Coimbra was the capital of Portugal until 1255 and the former royal palace is now part of the university. We toured the impressive library (unfortunately no photos allowed), the former royal palace and the chapel.

For lunch we travelled to Aveiro, the Venice of Portugal. Many of the restaurants were closed, but we found a cafe in the backstreets where the special of the day (Menu de Almoço) was Spaghetty Chicken Curry - and despite the unusual combination, it was delicious!

Aveiro has been a centre of salt production since Roman times, and more recently seagrass harvesting in a moliceiro (traditional boat), which are now used for tours of the canals. They are known for their colourful decorative panels with satirical, religious or bawdry images on the bow and stern.

We made a detour to Costa Nova, known for it's striped houses, before arriving in Porto just after 6pm. As we are staying in the centre of their main pedestrian shopping street, getting near the hotel in a vehicle in peak hour was quite the challenge!Read more