John here. We got away early from Porto, with the sun just rising behind the beautiful Porto bridge. We wanted to beat the heat and the sun for the long ride ahead of us, but EARLY breakfast is tricky in Porto (yesterday – Starbucks – I know …), so late at night I googlemapped a tiny cafe about 5km south. Turned out to be the ‘official’ club/cafe of the Porto Futbol team. Hmmm. But, the nice woman serving about four tables of Portuguese octagenarians intent on watching the news on tv made us great coffee and the most amazing toasted bun slathered in butter. Wow! It was the ONLY thing on the breakfast menu. That is, you either have coffee and a bun, or you have nothing. It was probably one of our most favorite breakfasts of the whole trip so far. No English spoken here, and the few locals arriving were served up the same breakfast without ordering. No need. As we rode away the lovely woman blew us kisses. Awww.
Porto as viewed from across the Douro River is beautiful, as you can see from the photos. We rode past lots of Port manufacturers. It was really exciting to finally see the Atlantic Ocean – we were following the coast for a good part of the ride. Flat. Sunny (lots of sunscreen reapplications). Cherries are in season so we stopped on the side of the road to buy a half kilo from a farmer selling them out of his truck.
We pulled into Aveiro around 3:00. 82 km. 366 ascent (nothing.) It was a hot, dry ride, we were happy to pull the bikes through the hotel lobby and cafeteria into a building they had in the backyard of the hotel where they would be safe.
Aveiro is loosely known as “the Venice of Portugal”. There are lots of canals, colourful gondolas full of eager tourists. Because we are too cool for school, we choose to sit in a bar on the sidelines, put our feet up and watch the boats go by. We walked up a street that was dripping with fabulous food stores – sardines, exotic pastries. John treated himself to some sort of breaded cod ball filled with delicious gooey cheese, which was consumed with white port at a patio in the sunshine across the street from the store. We toured the famous and inspiring Chapel of Joana (google her, she was taking no shit), and the cathedral (weird new organ).
And finally, in keeping with eating in restaurants with “cod” in the name, we had a seriously delicious dinner at Bacalhau & Afins. (See photo. Two young chefs.)
The videos in this post cover two days of riding – Porto to Aveira, and Aveira onward to the beach. We’ll talk more about the beach in the next post.
