In brief: Quite close to the town of Aveiro, the noted “Venice” of Portugal, the two peninsulas that crimp the entrance to Aveiro Bay offer very different experiences.
Northern Peninsula: Costa Nova and Bairra
Visiting Costa Nova, on the southern peninsula of Aveiro Bay, can feel like a fantasy trip. The unusual vertical, technicolor stripes of its houses sport a wide palette of colors.
Back in the 19th century fishermen built large storage bins on the sand, with vertical planks painted red. They had shifted here as it was easier to launch boats on this “new coast.” In time, these bins turned into housing.
Fisherman still launch from the peninsula, but the colorful buildings inspired by their predecessors now mostly accommodate lovers of the seemingly endless beaches.
Facing the bay, this was one of the best blocks of technicolor houses in Costa Nova. Your eyes don’t need adjusting. Costa Nova is just that vivid.
Pick a building, any building here. It makes a fine backdrop for a photo, as these people have found. They ignored that attractive interloper with an art nouveau style.
Even recent housing at Costa Nova carefully harmonizes with the older buildings.
A modern boardwalk lets visitors amble past the charming buildings on the bay, or stop at a café in one. Within the four or five blocks between the bay and the seashore at the other side of the peninsula, many of the newer apartment buildings have mimicked the town’s stripiness.
The seafront beaches along the stretch of Costa Nova go for many kilometers. Every few hundred meters, unassuming beach cabanas offer various eating options – some with café/pub food, some with fine meals. Here’s the one we found, with excellent food and a vista on the beach.
The town at the northern tip of the southern peninsula, Bairra, consists of lots of mundane apartment housing and more beaches like this. A massive seawall at this spot lets a host of people enjoy extra walking fun out to the sea.
This is one of the most distinctive features of Bairra – striped, but horizontally – and looms over the beach with the seawall. It’s the tallest lighthouse in Portugal and the second tallest in Europe.
Northern Peninsula: São Jacinto
By contrast, the northern peninsula hooking around Aveiro Bay offers a placid escape from the plentiful beach-goers of the southern peninsula. It takes an hour to drive round to São Jacinto, the north’s tranquil center – or a 20 minute ferry across.
As appealing as is the ferry ride, we enjoyed the drive up here: easy-going and picturesque, with plenty of vistas over the bay. On the road, for example, we found this lovely covered bridge for only trail-hikers to use, with a deep stream on one side and small pond on the other. Just one hiker was enjoying it for a picnic.
But, for fun, we took the car ferry back to the bustling towns. It’s a pleasure to cross the bay’s waters on the short ride, watching the famous lighthouse grow larger and larger. The lighthouse marks the access point to Aveiro Bay from the Atlantic.
One of the highlights of the day in São Jacinto seems to be the ferry activity, as this man shows. A harborside boardwalk passes by the terminal café in which we waited, as well as a few other eating and drinking spots. Though the town is quite small, across the bay you can see the density of the southern peninsula.
The highlight of our own getaway, however, was a three hour walk through the thickly forested dune region of the peninsula – a sizable natural reserve between the placid bay and the wilder Atlantic shore. The beach stretches forever here too, with much of it isolated, dune-buttressed shoreline and few if any people on it. Along the southern beaches, at Bairra and Costa Nova, we’d be seeing apartment buildings, oil-lathered sun-worshippers, and traffic.
One of the large freshwater ponds in the São Jacinto reserve of the northern peninsula. We saw many waterfowl, calmly feeding or flying about the reeds.
At mid-day, the sunlight was always filtered along the trail of the reserve, even in relatively open sections. The trail was sandy, but mostly hard-packed and easy-going.
A flash of orange settled into a restful moment on this wire for an African Hoopoe, one of our favorite birds.
A colorful moth poses for a close-up.
The contrast between the north and the south peninsulas is striking. You can choose your pleasure or – better yet – take advantage of both at Aveiro Bay.
(To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Portugal, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)
