Books, boats and buddhas - Portugal Road Trip Part 8
Some unexpected finds in Central Portugal
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| Oves moles - egg sweets - Aveiro |
After leaving our beautiful first vineyard, we headed back to the coast to do a circuit of the cities of Aveiro, Obidos, and Coimbra. Along the way we nearly tasted some weird egg sweets but remembered our last experience of weird egg textures, met the blue Terracotta Army in a garden of Buddhas and watched the famous waves of Nazaré. The weather wasn’t so kind to us in this part of the trip and this may have coloured our views of some of the sites we found, which should by all accounts have been wonderful and we didn’t find them so…sorry Evora.
Beautiful Aveiro
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| Art in Aveiro |
Staying for the night in a water park sounds weird but it was a small site right on the coast very close to Costa Nova. It was one of the cheapest we have stayed at and was on the dunes alongside the Atlantic Ocean; this obviously meant having some sundowners and watching the sunset. At this time of the year the water park was closed thankfully!
It was a only a 25 minute drive back to Aveiro the next morning, the reason we came to this area.This is a particularly pretty little city known for moliceiros, boats that resemble gondolas; they once were used for moving salt around the canals or collecting seaweed, now they simply ferry tourists up and down the waterways sharing the history of the city. We chose a lunchtime to do our trip and ended up being the only ones on the boat, a bargain at 12.50 euros each for a private tour!
Along the way we were introduced to many of the famous buildings and a nice touch was being shown old photos of the same buildings to see how the canals once looked. This gave us an idea of where we wanted to stroll back to later.
The trip lasted about an hour and we went out as far as the salt flats, that Aveiro is also known for, you cannot see much of this from the boat so we made a note to come back here too. The rest of the day was spent wandering around the city, we actually like to not do so much but simply enjoy the sights and walk. Unfortunately we missed the fish market, as that had closed by the time we got there, this was a shame as it is meant to be a great spectacle to see. Walking along the river the buildings looked so pretty in different colours, especially with the sun shining.
One intriguing sight was many ribbons with messages tied on to the bridge, this was like the padlocks we put on the bridge in Ljubljana, it’s a lovely way to leave a reminder, I think, without damaging property! The only thing we had to hand was a small ribbon that Pi had been given as a gift from the boat (I got a little bag of salt ‘for the lady’). We left the usual love message and added it to the thousands that were there already |
| A local man who has been immortalised for his ways of teaching children to swim, apparently just throwing them in the water and telling them to move! |
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| Sardine sculpture Costa Nova |
Lunch in a little cafe by the canal side, in the full sun, made us want to stay here for
ever but we strolled some more, found frozen yoghurt and went as far as the boat had taken us. Calling at the salt flats on our way home and then stopping for 10 minutes for a wander around Costa Nova to see the famous striped buildings ended another perfect day. Just in time for a sun downer back at the campsite.
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| Sun setting at Vagos |
Obidos
Nowhere near enough time here and tried to come back the next morning but it would have meant going north again when we really had to be pressing on south. The little time we to to spend here though whetted our appetite for a future visit. This is the Hay-on-Wye of Portugal, it has really embraced ‘book culture’ and was delightful, not only for the books, I promise! One of the old churches has been turned into a bookshop, the grocery store is really a bookshop selling a few groceries…the sardine shop has books all around. I was in heaven.
Problem was the heavens opened on us, and we were without coats; it was towards the end of the day too, so after a little shopping and trying the local sour cherry brandy liquor in a chocolate cup (yummy) we had to run back to Daisy. Not an easy feat in flip flops on wet cobblestones and uphill! A beautiful little town that deserves so much more time than we had.
The rain stopped and held off enough for us to get down to the sea at Nazaré. This is THE place for surfers and is the home of the sometimes 80 feet waves. They mostly occur during winter and whilst we were coming to the end of October, they were not quite this impressive. What we saw though was some very powerful waves, and it didn’t take much imagination to see how they could be enormous.
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| Waves at Nazaré |
And to the Buddhas…
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| The blue Terracotta Army |
This is quite an arresting site and not an altogether unpleasant way to spend an afternoon. It was a great walk around a very big sculpture garden in an vineyard. The sentiment is good, as it was created by José Bernardo, a millionaire art collector who was so incensed at the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, that he tried to recreate an Eden just south of Obidos. It also contains a whole section of African sculptures, modern art and a replica Terracotta Army, in addition to many Buddha images. After walking all afternoon, a little wine tasting was in order just before we left…not really sure what to make of it, other than if you forget you are in the middle of Portugal, there’s nothing odd at all about lots and lots of Buddhas!
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