While I am sure many nice things can be said about Aveiro, Venice it is not. I say that with some authority because I visited Venice ten years ago and Aveiro cannot rival the magic of Venice. I can’t even repeat the cliche that Aveiro is the poor man’s Venice, because Venice is on a completely different scale than Aveiro. The beauty of Venice punches you in the gut while Aveiro politely requests your attention. So why even make such a claim? It only makes Aveiro look bad.
True, Aveiro has a canal in the middle of a wide avenue and fabulously painted wooden boats floating on the water. However, these boats look like bloated gondolas, and there are no gondoliers pushing them along the canals with long sticks or oars or whatever they are called, because the Portuguese boats are propelled by engines. And no one on them is singing love songs in Italian, or in Portuguese for that matter.
Maybe because it’s late in the day or because we are visiting Aveiro in the middle of the week during the off season, the few boats in sight are moored to the bank of the canal with not one tourist aboard. The touristy tchotchke stores are also empty. Even a gallery with an amazing display of original art made by local artists is deserted. I take a couple of pictures of the scenery to remind myself of this place. The streets in the tourist area are paved with black and white stones like those in Lisbon, and the few Art Nouveau buildings feature charming balconies and some of their façades are covered with the famous azuleijos. In short, this part of town deserves a stopover if you have time to kill between Lisbon and Porto or if you want to taste the traditional egg yolk sweets called ovos moles (soft eggs), which originated in Aveiro, according to a sleek brochure I picked up on the way from the parking garage to the canal.
“Anyone want to go on a boat ride?” Rita asks no one in particular after taking the obligatory selfie with the boats in the background. By now I have learned that the boats are called moliceiros, which is the name of the seaweed that the local fishermen harvested in the past for use as fertilizer in the surrounding fields.
I wait for Anna to shoot down Rita’s idea. A sign by the boats reads that a ride costs 10 euros and no one is around to promise that it would be worth it. Plus, I don’t think anything spectacular can be seen from the boats that we can’t see from here. The canal stretches out to sea somewhere in the horizon, and the outer parts of town, which I saw on the way in, are too industrial to merit even a cheaper boat ride.
“Nah, I prefer to walk,” Vera decides without bothering to consult us.
Luckily the boats are not as attractive to Rita as Lisbon’s noisy tuk-tuks, and we are spared an embarrassing debate similar to the one we witnessed in the capital. I guess Rita was just checking the mood of the group after the anticlimactic ending of the visit to Nazaré. Maybe she guessed that I wouldn’t climb into one of these boats even if she offered to pay my share. As for Anna, I can almost hear her sighing in relief.
I am still baffled by Anna’s presence on this trip and her friendship with Rita. They say opposites attract, but Anna is beyond the opposite of Rita. Her energy feels like heavy shackles, and I wonder what Rita, with her insatiable appetite for life, food, and mishaps, gets out of carrying that extra weight around her neck. These two women hardly talk to each other. Even Anna’s decision to leave us earlier than planned did not generate a conversation.
“OK then, I’m going to get something to drink,” Rita announces cheerfully. She shuffles her boot-clad feet toward a small venue that functions as a café and gift store that specializes in sweets and ocean-themed knickknacks. The sound of the boots on the pavement makes me think that her feet could benefit from the cork shoes she bought in Nazaré, even though I still doubt that she will ever use them.
“I’m going to walk around,” Anna mumbles, partly to herself partly to the back of Rita’s head.
“Enjoy your walk, we’ll be here,” Rita retorts, sending out subtle passive-aggressive vibes even though she is probably not aware of it because she has the self-awareness of a fruit fly, not that I have any disrespect to fruit flies.
“You sure you don’t want to have coffee with us?” Vera calls after Anna.
“Mom, she’s a grown up, let her do what she wants,” Rita berates Vera.
“OK, OK,” Vera says, raising one arm in defeat. I guess she wants to show sympathy to the injured social justice warrior who needs to avoid our company now. “Are you going to have coffee with us?” she asks me by way of invitation.
“Sure, I’ll buy yours too. I still owe you,” I say. That tram ticket she bought me in Lisbon is still gnawing at me and I’m worried about the repercussions of owing money to Rita even by proxy. After she put some of the group activities on her (Fred’s) credit card, she started showing concern about money I owe her. As if I am going to disappear without paying my debt.
“No need. Consider it a gift,” Vera says, patting me on the arm.
Inside the café, Rita orders two galãos and several ovos moles. As expected, she makes a big deal about being able to order the correct coffee in Portuguese. Without waiting for the woman behind the counter to finish preparing the coffee, she takes the ovos moles to the table where Vera is already sitting.
“You should have told Anna to come with us,” Vera says.
“Mom, let her be, she wants to be alone,” Rita says, somewhat annoyed. She takes a little bite from one of the seashell-shaped ovos moles. Her eyes light up and she nods with approval. She pushes the plate toward her mother. “Try it, it’s good.”
The coffee arrives at our table. Vera tastes one of the ovos moles. “It’s good but I don’t need the extra sugar.”
“Come on, you only live once,” Rita reasserts her life motto and reaches for another seashell.
While they debate the merit of these cholesterol-laden sweets, my mind goes back to Anna, the woman who wants to be alone, behaving as if my exchange with the waiter has traumatized her. Give me a freaking brake. She has a problem with how I treat waiters. Me, the veteran waitress. I worked for so long in food service that even years later I still suffered from what we, veteran food servers call “waiters’ nightmares.” In one of my more memorable dreams, a customer orders a vanilla milkshake, and instead of asking the bartender to prepare me one, I go to the kitchen, put mashed potatoes in the blender, and serve the concoction in a tall glass. With a straw. In the dream I know I am doing something wrong, but the only way I can make the nightmare stop is by waking up.
These days, when I enter a restaurant, I automatically check the wait staff to see how they are being treated and how hard they work for their tips. Especially the older women who I can tell have been waiting tables for decades. I’m the last person who would want to annoy a waiter. I know how difficult and unforgiving this job can be. But Anna, she prefers seeing me as an evil customer, which I’ve never been and don’t plan on starting to be now. Even though that waiter in Nazaré was a piece of work.
I know I can’t say anything to Rita about Anna’s tantrum. Rita has little patience for other people’s troubles. She blows them off as soon as they open their mouths. Life is short, enjoy the moment, who cares what other people feel, love yourself, bend the rules if they don’t work for you, and on and on. Plus, she is too focused on her own troubles. And there are enough of them behind her cheerful disposition to fill up an hour-long hike, three times a week.
“We should save one for Anna,” Vera’s voice breaks through my ruminations.
Rita scoops up one of the seashells and wraps it in a napkin. Then she pushes the plate toward me. “Want the last one?”
I shake my head. “No, thanks. I don’t want to clog my arteries just yet.”
What is it with Portuguese egg-yolk sweets? What do they do with all the leftover egg whites? Not meringue cookies, I am sure. The pamphlets say that the nuns used the egg whites to starch their linen or habits, but how many nuns wear habits today?
Rita shrugs and pops the last seashell into her mouth. “You know, my mother doesn’t take any medication,” she says with her mouth partly full. “Not for high cholesterol, blood pressure, high blood sugar, nothing. Fred takes more medications than she does.”
Vera pats Rita on the arm. I don’t know if she’s doing it to tell Rita to shut up or to agree with her.
“You’re brave,” I compliment Vera. I’m a walking hypochondriac, not that I use medications or get sick often. I’m just scared of what’s in store for me. The future is approaching quickly with all its menacing diseases, incapacitations, and falls.
“She doesn’t want to be dependent on doctors and drugs, so she lives a healthy lifestyle. If she eats too much sugar one day, she will not touch it for a few days afterward,” Rita further explains, as if her mother is not sitting right next to her.
“Are we ready to go back to the car or do you want to keep walking around?” Vera asks Rita. She’s obviously not interested at being the center of attention. She acted the same way when Rita was laughing at her night terrors. Ignoring the bait and steering the conversation away from herself.
“Let’s go find Anna,” Rita says, rising from her chair and pushing it aside. She reads her mother’s clues quite well, sometimes.
We spot Anna inside a music store that houses a large collection of fado CDs and posters of famous musicians. Colorful T-shirts with prints of contemporary paintings and landscapes that hang on the walls make the ambience feel less touristy. I expect Rita to tell Anna that we are leaving town as soon as she sees her, but Rita loves shopping and we find ourselves roaming around the store until Rita decides that she has seen enough.
It is time to head to Porto.
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