The Venice of Portugal

 Although somewhat of a stretch, Aveiro is known as the Venice of Portugal.  It's a really cool town near the Atlantic coast a few hours north of Lisbon.  We made multiple trips there for weekend getaways and we fell in love with the place.  They call it the Venice of Portugal because the town is covered in a network of canals that used to be used for dredging seaweed that was turned into  fertilizer and harvesting salt.  Today both of those industries have long since died, but the canals and the boats are used to take tourists around town.  

I had so much fun painting this scene.  I remember walking past this boat and seeing the reflection in the water and thinking to myself - "That would be really fun to paint" and snapped a picture.  I was right, it was super fun to work the paint to make this reflection.  

Nearby Aveiro is possibly our all time favorite place to visit.  It's little known and not highly visited by tourists, but we visited many times drawn to the cute little housed that lined this fisherman's town shoreline.  This is Costa Nova, Portugal and is a close neighboring town to Aveiro, so whenever visiting Aveiro for a boat ride, we almost always stayed the night and spent some beach time in Costa Nova.  I guess I need to get a painting done of this cute little town.  

  I miss Portugal very much.  Painting scenes from this beautiful country helps me self medicate from a good Portuguese case of "saudade".  I love you Portugal!