Aveiro's beautiful old station suggests that it is more affluent than some of its rural counterparts which I've seen along the way. Although there's a newer station next door, it doesn't quite have the same character Here is a closeup of some of the tile work showing ordinary people engaged in traditional work such as fishing and salt harvesting The second place I fell in love with was Aveiro (pop. 78,000) which is about 3 to 4 hours North of Lisbon depending on which train you take and an hour South of Porto by train. This train leaves from Apollonia Station, which is a nightmare to get to because of roadwork in the area, though you can also get the train from Oriente, one of the larger stations in the suburbs. Things didn’t look too promising on the way up – lots of desolate country with scraggly trees, quite a few of them Eucalypts. Eucalypts? Yes, I suppose the terrain is rather like much of inland Australia. I don't know how much they are contributing ...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people