Day Trip to Aveiro and Costa Nova – Portugal

Two and a half hours for both trips – a day trip to Aveiro and Costa Nova, south of Porto, promises nature, architecture and history, with a minimal amount of time spend on the road. We stopped at Costa Nova first, before continuing to Aveiro and savouring the sunset in this picturesque town.

This post contains affiliate links to things like tours and hotels. These help me earn a small commission at no additional charge to you. Every affiliate link is marked with a *.

Costa Nova

Costa Nova is a coastal resort town south of Porto, best known for it’s colourful striped houses “palheiros” along the central promenade.

However, the entire small town has many different houses in many different styles, from traditional Portuguese styles, to Scandinavian styles to modern prefab houses. Here are some examples.

Since Coasta Nova is located on a sandbar between the ocean and the Aveiro lagoon it has beaches on both sides, although the ocean facing side is more the wide stretch of sand you’d think of when you hear the word “beach“. Dotted along the beach are quite a few restaurants and beach bars, open all year round.

At Bronze Seafood & Lounge Bar the octopus was really good, although I wouldn’t rank the sides very highly. The salmon sandwich was on point and gets 5/5 stars as a to-go beachfront lunch.

Back at the promenade you should definitely try a sweet filled Tripa (soft, like a crepe or waffle) gor Bolacha Americana (crunchy, like a wafer or ice cream cone) at “Zé da tripa“, a small street food like vendor who allegedly invented this type of dessert snack around 1960.

Where to park in Costa Nova?

Costa Nova has parking spaces along the main promenade, but those fill up quickly. Along the road “Avenida José Estevão” which leads into the town, you can find many free parking spaces as well and you will walk along the lagoon and see many quirky houses on your way to the beach and promenade.

Aveiro

Aveiro is heralded as “The Venice of Portugal” and when you visit the city, you can see why. It has a major canal running through the city, with many decorated gondola-like boats going up and down the waterway. However, can a city not just be itself?

Is Aveiro the Venice of Portugal?

“The Venice of Portugal” … the town of Aveiro is Aveiro. Not Venice. It has a lovely city centre -on solid land-, the architecture can’t really be compared and Venice has several hundred canals more. The boats aren’t gondolas (they’re actually similar to the old boats that were used to harvest “moliço” seagrass), the markets along the canal are Portuguese, not Italian. And those are all good things.

Aveiro was an important port and had a major part in salt production and export, already documented in the Roman times. In the late middle ages many small, narrow houses were built on the northern bank of the canal, occupied by fishermen and salt workers, people who worked in the lagoon and at sea.

Then, a few centuries later, it became a favoured holiday destination for Portuguese royalty, nobility and wealthy merchant families. They brought money into the town, the influence of which can still be seen today in the many Art Nouveau houses along the canal. Even today some of the salt fields are still in production.

Aveiro is very pretty, the city museum modern and worth a visit. Inside the museum you can even do a VR “Moliceiros” boat ride if you don’t want to pay for a real one, or the weather isn’t good enough.

Where to park in Aveiro?

We parked at Estacionamento Saba Marquês de Pombal, that might not be the best parking lot, or the cheapest, but it was close to the city centre and museum. No idea why the people in the reviews say the parking spots are too small, we had a Mizubishi Colt, which fit into the parking spots easily.