April 29, 2024 Porto, Portugal 6 days left of 138

 We are off again for a long tour. This is another 6.5 hour tour. We are not sitting around watching the world going by. Today we are headed to Aveiro which some say is the Venice of Portugal, and historic Coimbra.

Aveiro is set along a lagoon called Ria de Aveiro. The canals are navigated by colorful and humous boats called barcos moliceiros, they are traditionally used to harvest seaweed.

Our bus stopped and let us out for our walking tour at this building. There was no problem finding this unique tile decoration. I love the attention to detail.

Just across the street are the boats. A ride was not planned for today, though people were filling the boats to enjoy the trip. I love the colorful boats with the multicolored buildings in the back. It was a perfect day to be on the water.

The boat owners have a sense of humor. The top shows Nuns fully clothed, and to the right is what the majority of them looked like, with various women in unclothed states, and difficult situations.

The bridge was flanked by statues, Here is one of them. The town is quaint medieval with cobblestone walkways and streets.

There is always the church and it seems a tile decoration is mandatory. Today is Monday, so the church is locked.

Our lunch break was at a local hotel. The meal was delicious and the fado music was entertaining. Fado music genre which can be traced to the 1820's in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. It is characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sense of resignation, fate and melancholy. These three started playing and singing Fado music while in college, during by their statement, the best years of their life. The instrument the gentleman was playing on the left is known as a Portuguese Guitar. It has 12 strings, and sounded a little bit like a mandolin. We enjoyed the short presentation. Lunch was delicious.

We are on our way to Coimbra. This tile picture was along side the road.

Below are multiple stork nests. They will reuse the nest, and continue adding to it each year. Just past here we saw multiple storks, but I didn't have my camera ready.

This must be a thing in days of old. When you want to divide traffic, you just build a building in the middle and widen the block from there. This is not the first time we have seen this.

This is a picture showing you were our walk is going to start, clear up at the top where the University is located.

Students pass under this daily to attend classes and go to the library.

Students stay in shape walking around campus, and all the stairs. I really don't know how people with a disability make it here, as there are stairs, steps, uneven walk ways, and not a lot of elevators, or ramps available.

I hope Katie and Missy are reading this. If this doesn't look like it is straight out of Harry Potter books, I don't know what does. These students have earned their black cloaks, and once earned must be worn daily no matter the weather. They look very nice in their white blouse, black tie and skirt and black cloak. This is a 500 year tradition that they proudly carry on. We were also told that at graduation, their family will come and following the ceremony strip their clothes off down to their birthday suit. We were not told the background to this.

What goes up, must come down.  Lucky for us we drove up, but we saw people walking up, and cars driving on these roads. Yikes!

This was waiting for us at the bottom. We had some people who had been waiting for a toilet, so our guide says we have 1-2 minutes for you to go in and order a coffee or drink and use the facilities. I don't know about you, but when there is a line there just is not time, and who has heard of drinking coffee in 1 - 2 minutes, because they don't do coffee to go.

You can count on a church being nearby.

Here is D. Joao III from the 1500. He was one of their Kings, they abolished their monarchy 1910.

It has been a good long day. They again pulled the gangway up right behind us as we were again late returning to the ship. They will always wait for you when they run their tours. Whew.

Today I got just under 10,000 steps. I won't have any problem sleeping tonight.