We packed up, took out the trash as instructed, left 12 euros on the table for the city lodging tax, and got our bags down to the Tibias café as it opened at 9am for David’s espresso, sumo de laranja, and croissant. Pam had already eaten the rest of the granola in the apartment.
The train station was two blocks away, and downhill, so we shouldered our packs and wheeled our suitcases to the station. It was a couple of hours to Coimbra, which is inland and south of Porto.
Pedro, our host and owner, picked us up at the Coimbra-B station. You can get downtown to Coimbra-A via a spur on the train line, but I guess it’s easier to park and get taxis at Coimbra-B. It was gracious of him to pick us up. He said it was on his way to the house where he planned to show us around.
After the modern, renovated apartments we’d stayed in so far, the house in the Sata Clara area of Coimbra was quite a treat. It was on a steep hill, with a gate. It had three floors, and the upper-level garden was on the level of the top floor, with two flights of outside stairs to reach it from the gate.
The interior was beautifully decorated with mid-century memorabilia and art, a 1950s kitchen, and a metal spiral staircase to the bedrooms. The windows in the front had inside shutters, and both the windows and the shutters could be closed to keep the day’s heat out. There was an air conditioner if we needed it, but there was always a good breeze, so we were never too hot.
The street was steep in front of the house and made a zig further up the hill above the garden. From there, a saint’s statue looked down on us from the Santa Clara convent, probably Santa Isabel, a doer of good works and Queen of Portugal in the 1200s. The street is part of one of the many pilgrimage routes in northern Spain and Portugal.
The private garden, being high up, had a great view of the central hill of the old city of Coimbra, crowned by the university buildings, one of the oldest universities in Europe. It had a huge olive tree and a lemon tree. Alstroemeria was growing in the garden. I’d only ever seen it in a flower shop. A european serin, a yellow and brown-streaked finch, serenaded us from the electric wire.
We had lunch at a Turkish lunch spot. They advertised lamejun, spelled in some Portuguese way. However, when you wrapped it around a sandwich filling it no long had the crispy toasted quality that we like in the lamejun we can get in Watertown, MA.
Pedro told us about the Linha Botanica, a scenic way to ride to the top of the university hill. The first time we rode, the bus driver gave us some headphones so we could listen to the narration describing the history of the spots we were passing. It wound around the extensive botanical garden, through a dense grove of bamboo. We rode the whole loop, back to Santa Clara, but we stayed on to ride back up to the bus stop at the formal garden near the top of the university hill. It was Sunday, and graduation day at the university. Students in black jackets, with black cloaks, had black diplomas with wide colored ribbons marking their field of study.
After enjoying the garden, its large, ancient trees, and its birds, we walked up to the exit below a Roman aqueduct. We arrived at a big square surrounded by historic buildings at the top of the hill, and discovered a singing building. There was scaffolding on the outside of the Royal Palace, and it was windy. The wind triggered a minor chord in the scaffold pipes and the stronger the wind blew, higher and higher pitches added to the harmony.
The walk down was quick. The active old town of Coimbra seemed very small, but we might have been missing a lot. We were pretty tired and worn out from so much walking and sightseeing over so many days.
We had a hard time deciding where to have supper. The restaurants near us were mostly fast food, or just lunch. We settled on Ragu, a place that made fresh pasta. Then we went to the grocery store for some granola, milk, juice, bread, and any snacks that seemed appealing.