Walking Around Coimbra & Gondolas in Aveiro

November 7^th, 2025

Arriving in Lisbon yesterday late afternoon, I needed to be at the airport to meet Naomi around 6 pm.  She had booked a hotel room at the Moxy Oriente, which was only about 3-4 kilometres from the airport, and right near the Lisbon train station.  Parking looked like it was going to be challenging by the hotel, so I decided to park Octi at a Park and Ride place at the airport and leave it there for the night.

 

Waiting for Naomi to come out at the Arrivals, I was amazed at the flow of humanity spewing out of the wide doorway.  Over the next 20 minutes, there were only two 5 second intervals of no one coming out of the exit, otherwise there were 5-10 people exited every second!  Finally, out came the lovely human that I was there to meet.  It was nice to see Naomi again.  An expensive taxi ride later (20 Euros for 3 km), we arrived at our hotel.

The Lisbon Train Station.

The station is still nice in the daytime...but not quite as good as at night.

The next morning, we grabbed a Bolt (like Uber), for 1/3 the price of yesterday’s cab ride, to pick up Octi and headed out of Lisbon. 

 

Naomi's first time seeing Octi, it looks like she approves.

Let's hit the road.

Our first destination was the small city of Coimbra with a population of around 150,000.  We parked on the opposite side of the Mondego River, which is the longest river that is entirely in Portugal.  It had rained on and off on our almost two-hour drive, but we lucked out and the rain tapered off as we crossed the bridge to the town centre which sprawled up a hillside.

Arriving in Coimbra.

Walking over to the centre of town.

We wandered around the streets as aimless tourists and took in the sites.  Naomi took a shining to the tiled walls of various buildings.  We stopped at a tiny restaurant on a narrow street for some lunch before heading back to Octi to continue our journey north.

Heading down one of the pedestrian only streets.

There were many intriguing little sidestreets.

And oddly shaped buildings.

Some church.

Looking back at where we parked.  We can see Octi behind the tree right in the middle of the pic.

Naomi loves the tiles.

Lunch!

The Hotel Astoria...we think it was open.

The city centre looked a lot nicer as we were about to leave.

The next stop was the another small city, Aveiro, considered to be the “Venice of Portugal” thanks to its canals with gondolas plying the waters.  These gondolas used to collect seaweed for consumption but now were more profitable soaking up the tourist dollars.  We ambled around for about an hour in the late afternoon.

The main canal in Aveiro.

By the canal.

A couple of gondolas.

This was painted on the first one.  It's hard for you to see, but those are a lady's legs as the hands of the clock and the caption below in Portuguese says "I'll wait for 9:15"...see if you can figure it out.  Now I pointed out to Naomi that I don't actually think that her legs will be spread apart, as the "joke" insinuates, but in fact crossed.

A gondola passing by.

A lovely tile mosaic on a wall in an alleyway.

Beautiful cobblestone artwork, and the Christmas lights look ready to go.

A cool shaped building.

This bridge is like one of those where you put a lock on it, to show your love, but instead it was colourful ribbons.  People wrote what they liked on the ribbon.

Do you like my hair?

A cool looking frog.

It was now time to drive to Porto, the second largest city in Portugal, where we will be spending 3 nights.  I was concerned about parking in Portugal as we knew that Octi would not fit in the underground parking of the hotel.

As we were leaving Aveiro, we saw this very ugly looking football stadium, the Estádio Municipal de Aveiro, which is the 5th largest in Portugal.  It was built only in 2003 (to us, we thought it was from the 60s due to the colour scheme) for the UEFA Euro 2004 tournament and is now home for S.C. Beira-Mar football club.

We pulled into the small, triangular lot that could fit about 50 cars, and it looked quite full, just as most of the streets seemed to be lined with cars.  There were a couple of spots in the center of the triangle, but they looked awfully tight for the van.  I envisioned having to do a 12-point turn to jockey Octi into the spot.

 

Then we saw a vehicle parked on the perimeter, straight ahead of us, leave, but another car immediately pulled into the spot.  I asked Naomi to go and ask the driver if he wouldn’t mind giving us that place and taking one of the tighter ones and thankfully he obliged. 

 

There were a couple of guys assisted us out to park Octi, and she did stick out a bit, but it was going to work.  These men seemed to be homeless guys who help out with the parking in exchange for a bit of money.  I was happy to give them a few Euros, which was all I had in change.  Whew!  Hard part over, and Octi was not going to move again until we finished our stay in Porto.

Grabbing our luggage, we wandered slightly down hill to the accommodation, the Chic & Basic Gravity Hotel.  Their “theme” was that everything that could be upside down, was upside down.  There were plants in pots hanging from the ceiling, writing on a wall was upside down, the ugly wallpaper in the elevator was upside down…

In our Porto hotel, Chic & Basic, everything is supposed to be anti-gravity, or at least upside down.

A sideways swimming pool, the water flowed down from the top.

I couldn't hang from the ceiling...so this was the next best thing.

We settled into our room and then ventured out to a nearby Thai restaurant.  Most restaurants are closed from 3-7 pm and then stay open until 10 or 11 pm.  We arrived at 7:30, but this place was already packed or reserved.  We opted for takeout and returned to our room for dinner and a relaxing evening…it had been a good day seeing a good chunk of this small country.