Our Apartment
After arriving in the dark last night, we discovered that our location in Braga, Praça Velha, wasn’t just kind of close to historic things, but it was just inside the Arco da Porta Nova, a landmark location on the medieval city wall, marking an entrance into the historic district of Braga. On the square inside the gate, there were several restaurants, with apartments above. Outside the gate was a main street that seemed to circle around the old city beside the wall. There were several small shops and a bus stop , including an excellent pastelaria called Tibias de Braga.
This time our 3rd floor apartment was a bit dark (2nd floor in European-speak), buried in a sea of buildings with windows that looked onto other walls. There was a tiny balcony where you could check the outside air, but it it was an enclosed space of roofs and crumbling gutters. There was a “deck” below for an apartment below us, but no one used it that we saw. There was a clothesline outside one of our windows, but I wouldn’t dare use that because if I dropped something, how would I get it back! There were dropped clothespins on the roof below.
There was a large living room and kitchen with a dining table dividing them. The décor was more industrial that the shiny new apartments in Lisbon and Porto, and grayer than the bright airy pictures on booking.com. The roomy bathroom was smooth gray concrete. Maybe with the damp winters we’ve heard about, that’s more practical than peeling paint.
It was also inconvenient that there were only two coffee pods for the coffee machine, which required some particular brand of pods. We got some instant coffee at the grocery and relied on the nearby Tibias pastelaria for more breakfast snacks, after Pam ate granola in the apartment.
Minho Free Walking Tour
We thought a walking tour would be a good way to discover the city. We found Minho Free Walking Tours, which promised an historical intro to the city. The tour is really free, but the guide passes the hat for a pay-what-you-want, which is a popular method. They also had tours of Guimarães and Bom Jesus do Monte by reservation only.
We met our guide with her green umbrella and three other history-seekers right outside Arco da Ponta Nova. (Our apartment was in a useful location!) She pointed out some features in Praça Velha – the one original medieval-era building, and one of the calvários, dioramas in the walls of various buildings throughout the city center displaying a scene from Jesus’ final days. The doors of the calvários are opened during Semana Santa (Holy Week).
Then she led us down the narrowest lane in the city, barely wide enough for her umbrella. It was beside the medieval wall and the buildings there were built right against that wall. We walked along the street toward the Sé de Braga, the city cathedral. In the block in front of the cathedral, we stopped in a guitar store and learned about cavaquinhos as the ancestor of the Hawaiian ukulele, as well as the Portuguese guitar. (Later, one of our fellow tour members went back to buy his own cavaquinho. We saw the couple again when we went to Bom Jesus do Monte.)
A curiosity about the Braga Cathedral is a statue on the outside rear wall, Our Lady of the Milk, the Virgin breast-feeding Jesus. Even more curious is a plaque nearby acknowledging that the cathedral was built on a Roman temple to the goddess Isis.
We continued to the Praça do Municipio where a Library and Municipal building face off. The guide described how the Library was fancier and on higher ground, establishing its importance. Formerly belonging to the university, it is now public. Its major collection of antique books is of interest to researchers.
On our way to the Jardim de Santa Barbara, our guide pointed out some businesses that had glass floors inside their entrance. The glass lets people see the Roman ruins revealed during building or renovations. We ended the tour at the Praça da Republica.
Lunch and New Friends
After the tour, we wandered on the Avenida da Liberdade, the major cross street with the Praça da Republica, looking for a promising lunch spot. We settled on Brasiliera, which turned out well, even though it was probably an obvious tourist option.
After lunch, David checked his phone and found that a Facebook group that he joined, Braga+ Expats, was having a ladies’ meeting at a café on the other side of the Praça. We headed over to say hello and were warmly welcomed and David was allowed to stay . We spent a couple of hours chatting about people’s experiences. The woman I sat next to had just arrived the week before. In the group were the admin Cindy, Anna, Joanna, Rosanne, Susan, and more. It was nice to meet Cathy, another musician who plays flute.
Afterward, we walked to a recommended neighborhood in Praça Mouzinho de Albequerque. One of the women lived there. We didn’t imagine that there would be an available apartment overlooking the lovely green space though. We walked up a hill to the Capela de Guadalupe and saw the dramatic tower of the Monumento ao Sagrado Coração de Jesus further up. We walked down beside the brown hillside of the Monumento, speculating about the apartments along that street too.
Evening
We walked back to our apartment and did some laundry since the apartment had a washing machine. No dryer, just a nice, big clothes rack. I think most people don’t use dryers, which are hard to install in apartments. Instead, they hang their clothes. The spin on the washing machine helps a lot, of course. We did some more laundry by handwashing with our non-perfumed hiking detergent and then spinning it in the machine.
The festival of São João was the big activity in Braga for the coming weekend. Braga has lots of festivals! Their Semana Santa is one of the biggest Christian celebrations anywhere. This year there was a Roman reenactment in May that people were still talking about.
The São João lighting ceremony in the Praça was supposed to be tonight, but it had been raining heavily around dinnertime. The rain had largely stopped by 21:00, so we walked back to Praça da Republica. However, staff were walking around among the crowd letting people know that the lighting was being postponed until Friday. We had fun taking some night pictures before heading back to the apartment.
