May 9 Monday onto Aveiro - The Venice of Portugal

 We were so fortunate to have a beautiful day in Aveiro.  In Vagos it was overcast with a lot of fog.

This is a city I really wanted to visit.  I love Venice.  I know that this is just a tiny knock off of Venice, but it is really cute!  

We found a parking garage near the center of town and explored from there.  

Some buildings have a lot of tile.  See close-up below.

And lots of patterns in the tile work that you walk on.

Always churches.

And public buildings with statues of famous people.

And then we found the canals - and the European style buildings.

As we walked down to the canals we say all these tiles on the walls on the steps down.

This buildings tiles are super different. 

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The guy who founded Aveiro - looks like a crane is lifting him up - was he controversial?

We had read about this company that makes gelato using flavors from Portugal.  Some of the flavors were interesting but not enticing.  I choose blueberry with raspberry and tiny round pieces of chocolate.  It was quite good.

On the balcony above the gelato shop.

At the furthest most part of the canals was this design.  The steps lead up to and around it.  On the backside is the public parking lot - very large and not at all photogenic.

As we walked down this street I noticed this building with red shutters and dark colored laundry.  

Just a few buildings down was this pastel colored building - with pastel colored laundry.  Was that a  coincidence?  

Another church with tiles.

I love this sign.  But they don't really say where happiness is located8!

Be careful - this is a busy street.

It was getting late and we were very hungry.  Michael kept finding these highly Google rated restaurants then we would find them and they would be closed.  It seems a lot of restaurants close on Mondays.  But we found this Route 66 diner that was open!  I did not take a picture of the menu.  But all the entries were named after cities along the U.S. route 66.  So New Mexico was prominent.  I don't remember the name of our crispy chicken sandwich - but it was not the Albuquerque.  The fries were great - the milk shake pretty boring.

A bridge over the canal.  Instead of padlocks as you see so many times in Europe - these are ribbons tied to the bridge to profess your undying love for each other as a couple.