Having arrived in Coimbra yesterday, we’ve realized how tired we are. We can’t absorb any more churches, and remember them. The camera helps with reminding us of what we’ve seen. We’re sort-of ready to be home again, and the funky house in Coimbra with its garden seemed just right for relaxing.
We didn’t have time to really explore Coimbra, so we fell back on our most relaxing activity. We went birdwatching in the Jardim Botanico. We rode the Linha Botanica bus again up to the garden. We were getting a jumpstart on learning European birds with the Merlin app. You start the Sound ID recording mode, and it tells you a good guess at what birds are singing around you. We getting a good handle on city-garden birds, like Black Redstart, Short-toed Treecreeper, and the lively and rather friendly Serin.
After a couple of hours in the garden, no hills and only a few garden stairs, we started to need some lunch. We headed up to the university to find the ticket office for the library tour that Pedro told us about. We had lunch in a university cafeteria with a buffet of adequate food: pork, rice, cabbage, fruit and cake. The helpful servers supplied us with beverages. Wine is always available.
The Joaninna Library dates from the Baroque era. It has three floors. The basement was a prison. The middle level looked like an ordinary library from long ago. The top floor was what everybody comes to see. There were 3 sections separated by arches. We saw gilded sculptures, carved columns supporting the galleries of shelves, and big inlaid wood tables. The detail was magnificent.
To preserve books, they made shelves of oak, which has bug repellent qualities. For a couple of centuries, a colony of bats helped control insects. They lay leather covers on the tables at night to protect them from bat droppings.
Our timed ticket for the library included entry to the other buildings in the square. We visited the São Miguel Chapel, which had an elaborately ornamented organ mounted on the side wall. The Palácio Real (royal palace) included an impressive convocation hall for university ceremonies.
Pam particularly enjoyed hearing the whistling of the scaffolding again (see the previous post for more info). However, it was Monday and the singing of the building was mixed with hammering and construction noise.
We had dinner at Cerdol, at the bottom of our Santa Clara hill. It was the fanciest restaurant we had been in, serving more unusual traditional food. We had homemade country sausage made with chicken, pork and bread, with grilled potatoes and cabbage.