2016.09.17 (Porto – Coimbra)

After our breakfast at the hotel, we took Porto’s metro one last time to the train station. Upon boarding the train, we enjoyed seeing passengers arguing that someone else were in their seats, while some others were realizing they were in the wrong carriage. Flash back to our last trip in UK last year, in York where we ended up on the wrong train! The train ride to Coimbra was nice. We were warned that Coimbra had two train stations appropriately named “A΅ and ‘B”. Naturally, we arrived at “B” then we needed to transfer train to get to “A”. Jenny was seeking to get confirmation of the platform but the agent was not understanding her quite well. Yesterday evening in Porto, at the restaurant Jenny requested from our waiter ΅Just the bill please”… the waiter brought us a beer instead! Our language struggle continues somewhat!

Our hotel was only few minutes walking from the train station. After settling into our room, we booked our accommodation for our next town: Nazare. We even managed to book our bus tickets and pay online thanks to PayPal. I was thankful that I had my PayPal password available in my Keypass2 database. After our next travel destination logistics confirmed, we took a stroll up to the old University campus. Coimbra is home of one of the oldest universities in continuous operation in the world. It was established in 1290 in Lisbon and it went through a number of relocations until it was moved permanently to Coimbra in 1537. Shortly after our arrival in Porto, we discovered that University student dress similarly to Harry Potter but with a black cape. They are easily noticeable while wandering the streets. On the campus, we stumbled on a wedding… after all it is Saturday. We had a great seafood supper in a small restaurant where each plate coming out of the kitchen appeared unique.

2016.09.18 (Coimbra)

This morning after realizing the hotel’s breakfast was disappointing (but not included with the room), we opted for some pastries and coffee on the road. We traced back much of the route we did yesterday but we stopped for a museum visit as well as self guided tour of the old University campus. As we discovered after arriving in Portugal, the restaurant typically start to open around 7:30pm. We are usually among the first few customers which works out well for us as the small restaurants quickly fill up. In order to sustain ourselves until 7:30pm we have started to take a snack in the mid afternoon. Today, it’s pizza and beer on the river front to the rescue. We discovered that many, if not most, of the restaurants in Coimbra are closed on Sunday. We managed to get one of the last table in one of the few restaurants opened. We even got to enjoy in the restaurant some Fado at the end of our meal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fado). It was also the first restaurant to only accept cash!

2016.09.19 (Coimbra – Nazaré)

This morning we went to explore the location of the bus station which ended up being beside a McDonald. We enjoyed Portugal’s McCafé meal offering while making use of the free wifi. Back at the hotel, we packed our luggages and made our way to our 1:30pm bus to Nazaré. To our delight, the bus ride offered free wifi along the way. Nazaré is a small beach town with plenty of hotels and restaurants. We even managed to secure one of the hotel recommended by Rick Steve’s travel guide. We can only image that the Coimbra university students must invade this place from time to time. After resting and we set out to book our accommodation and transportation for Lisbon. It seemed that most of the travelers were converging on Lisbon, as Booking.com was showing 91%+ of the accommodation were already reserved. It is always a bit stressful reviewing hotels when the website keeps reminding you that 62 other persons are reviewing the same hotel as you are.. and you only have 26 hotels to review! We ended up booking an apartment offering with a 9.2 score. That seems a bit odd! After some blog follow-up, we went in search of some restaurants I had flagged on TripAdivsor. It was a good thing that we identified three restaurants as our first one was closed until next week. I’m really getting good usage of my Android phone with the Maps.Me offline application. At the restaurant, we witnessed someone being locked into the men’s washroom. Strangely, no one wondered in there afterwards.

2016.09.20 (Nazaré)

We enjoyed our hotel’s included breakfast. We were a bit disappointed that the weather was only in the low 20 C – not exactly swimming temperature. Hence after visiting the local market, we opted for a long stroll to the top of the cliff above the town – skipping the funicular ride. Back at our hotel room, we had an afternoon nap. What’s a vacation without the occasional nap? In the evening, we headed to another seafood restaurant where Jenny really enjoyed her seafood rice meal.