Handpicked experience · Porto
Porto, Portugal
A town strangled by a sandbar and brought back by cutting a channel through it, seen from a painted boat that was designed to haul weed and carries a filthy joke on one end.
A canal network created by reopening a blocked harbour
A cruise in a boat designed for hauling lagoon weed
Painted panels that are far ruder than they look
A sandspit village of banded timber houses
Shallow pools where the lagoon is still turned into a crop
A convent sweet born from a surplus of egg yolks
A half day south from Porto to Aveiro and the beach village of Costa Nova, including a cruise on the canals in one of the painted boats. It is a short outing built around a lagoon, and the lagoon is the reason for everything else here.
Aveiro was a working seaport until a bar of sand closed across its mouth. The harbour silted, the sea connection failed, the fleet had nowhere to go and the standing water brought disease. The population collapsed and the place spent the best part of two centuries in decline.
In the early nineteenth century a channel was cut straight through the sandbar to let the sea back in. The town recovered almost immediately. Everything you see on this visit — the canals, the salt pans, the boats, the architecture paid for by renewed trade — dates from after somebody dug that cut.
The moliceiro is not a gondola and was never built to carry passengers. It is a flat-bottomed working craft designed to harvest moliço, the weed dragged up off the lagoon bed and spread on fields as fertiliser. The shallow draught and the long curved prow exist for that job.
The painting is the part worth looking at closely. Panels are traditionally painted with a religious or sentimental scene at one end and a crude, satirical or frankly filthy joke at the other, often at the expense of local figures. Ask what a panel actually says before assuming it is charming.
The striped houses on the sandbar were not built as a colour scheme for photographs. They began as fishermen's huts and gear stores, boarded and painted in bold bands so they could be picked out from a distance in poor light, on a low, featureless spit where one hut looks like another.
They became houses later, and the stripes stayed because by then they were the point.
The lagoon still holds working salt pans, harvested by hand in summer as they have been for centuries. The other local product is a convent sweet of egg yolk and sugar in a thin wafer shell, made in shell and fish shapes, which came about because convents used egg whites for other purposes and had yolks to spare.
Around an hour from Porto each way, so the time on the ground is short and the pace is brisk. The canal cruise is a set length and runs whatever the weather, in an open boat.
The lagoon is exposed and the wind off the Atlantic is constant at Costa Nova, so it is cooler there than in Porto even on a warm day.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Because a sandbar closed its harbour mouth and a channel had to be cut through to restore the sea connection, which reshaped the whole waterfront.
The port trade failed, standing water brought disease and the population fell sharply over roughly two centuries of decline.
Harvesting weed from the lagoon bed to spread on fields as fertiliser. It is a working boat, not a pleasure craft.
Traditionally with a devotional scene at one end and a rude or satirical joke at the other, frequently aimed at people in the town.
They began as fishermen's huts and stores, painted in bold bands so they could be told apart from a distance on a featureless sandspit.
Yes, the lagoon still has working pans harvested by hand in summer, using methods that have changed very little.
Egg yolk and sugar in a thin wafer shell, a convent recipe that arose because the whites were being used for other things.
A half day, with about an hour of travel in each direction, so the time actually spent in Aveiro and at the coast is limited.