We took an early train out of Coimbra to Porto. Porto is twice the size of Coimbra (yet only half the size of Lisbon), and a new city for me, so I was excited to see it. Final report: Porto did not disappoint. Of course, we were only there for a little over a day, but initial impressions suggest it is a lively city with lots going on.

After a relatively short – and completely punctual – train ride, we dumped our bags at the hotel and stopped for a coffee while we figured out what we wanted to do for the day. I adore the practice of stopping at a cafe patio for a coffee mid-morning. And I adore that the Portuguese believe a coffee is to be enjoyed, unrushed. Americans get their coffee in a paper cup so they can bolt from the coffee shop as quickly as possible, with no assumption that one should savor the beverage.

We walked over to Igreja da Ordem de St Francisco – a Franciscan monk order and church. Again, a whole lotta gold. Technically no photos, but…

Luke spent a lot of time working through his Catholic learnings and history to try to piece things together. I didn’t bother since a church is a church is a church to me, but it’s always amusing when Luke discovers a new rabbit hole to explore.

The main cathedral has been decommissioned. On the property, there’s also a smaller church/chapel, a museum, and a crypt. The crypt had a lot more private burial chambers than I was expecting, but it did have an underground space you look into that was just full of bones. It sounds like there was a lot of cemetery mobility as residents outgrew their burial spaces.

At some point in the crypt, we passed the point of being hungry. When we got back outside, we were both feeling cranky and we had a hard time making decisions about lunch. I hate when we miss the window for making decisions!

We eventually settled on a fancy-looking place under an even fancier-looking hotel. This place had veggie options so I was excited! Cauliflower soup with green apple slices (amazing), slivered beets with greens, and – of course – cheese and wine. It was all excellent, and the service was exceptional, so it was a good choice. The only negative was when we had to fight off a pigeon. This bird was circling our table, then hopped on the table next to ours. That behavior isn’t unheard of, but we certainly didn’t then expect the bird to fly onto our table and try to eat our cheese! We had a horrible time swatting the damn thing away (and then keeping it away). So if one of us gets super sick in the next week or so, it very well may be bird flu from the pigeon who tried to eat our wine and cheese.

After defending our lunch, we headed off to the Porto Cathedral.

Predictably, it started raining shortly after we left the cathedral, so we walked a bit and then found a comfy place to grab a beer and wait out the rain.

When the rain let up, we went to the hotel to freshen up before going out for a late dinner at Gruta, a little Portuguese-Brazilian fusion restaurant that was praised as having some of the best fish in Porto. Wow, those reviews were not kidding! I had croaker (I’d describe it as a sea bass or durado relative) in a roasted red pepper and coconut milk sauce that was simply amazing. Luke had a rice dish with some special Portuguese shrimp. Desserts were similarly spectacular. Luke’s was a meringue with wasabi ice cream and port-soaked cherries, and mine was a cassava cake with caramelized coconut and honey-drizzled cheese. They sound wild, but I assure you, they worked.

Thankfully, our hotel was close by since we were full and sleepy. I’m not used to 9:15 dinner reservations!

As with the prior day, we started off with a walk across the river in a horrible downpour to get to the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova. This was the 2nd cloister built by the same order as the one we visited the day before, and since they left the first because of flooding, this one was obviously going to be uphill. We joke that the idea of “walking uphill both ways” surely must originate from here because it feels true.

This building was not much to look at outside, but the inside was simply amazing. I’ve been to a LOT of cathedrals and churches in my travels, and while La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is the most awe-inspiring cathedral I’ve seen, this was the most ornate. The altar looked to be made of just gold, and lots of it!

Coffee was in short supply (and poor quality) at the hotel, so we walked over to Santa Cruz, the church where we were meeting up with Matt and Marnie. Having a coffee in a church cafe was a novel endeavor and we enjoyed it. Plus, it was dry and out of the rain.

Many of the streets in Coimbra are pedestrian-only, which is a delightful experience. We meandered along, buying postcards and looking at the other various souvenir shops before heading back up to the university for our 2:00 tickets to see the library. Yes, we had timed tickets to see a library, but this is no regular library. The Joanina Library (also called the Baroque Library) is more like a cathedral with books than anything else.

I was fascinated to learn that this library has 2 colonies of bats that have lived in the library since the US declared its independence. The bats eat the insects that would otherwise devour the books, so the library maintains a symbiotic relationship with the bats. That’s not something you see or hear about often! In the US, we definitely would’ve exterminated the bats and then spent oodles of money managing the ensuing insect problem. We would probably have poorer results, too.

We rounded out the evening with some wine and games back at Matt and Marnie’s AirBnB. One of the many perks of life in Europe would be the proximity to friends. And escaping a megalomaniac dictator who cares only about his own power, of course. Whenever people ask where we are from and we say the US, they give us such a look of pity (and they are right to do so). I was researching health insurance and it seems that if you pay into the social security system here (which happens if you have a job), then you just get health coverage. For free. My US-oriented brain can barely comprehend the idea of a government wanting its citizens to have access to medical care.

Over the last two days, we’ve started to really think more about Portugal as a place we could live. We’ve always talked about moving abroad when we retire (or at least snow-birding abroad), but we both increasingly feel that we may have to move sooner/immediately so we are approaching this trip more and more as a scouting trip. Portugal has a very accessible cost of living, and obtaining a visa to live and work here wouldn’t be terribly difficult (especially since I’ve never met a bureaucracy that I couldn’t navigate). It’s very multi-cultural, and it has all of the contemporary aspects of daily life that we would hate to give up on (wifi, consistent access to water and electricity, etc). It’s one of the safest countries in the world, with pick-pocketing being the predominant crime. And travel from here to the rest of Europe (and the US) is really easy.

We started the day heading over to the mall to get some provisions. It was sunny out, and truly a lovely morning.

We met Matt, Marnie, and the boys at Se Velha, the Old Cathedral, and then explored the cathedral. Not a bad cathedral, but it wasn’t the highlight of the trip, either. Very average.

We did some more exploring, stopped for more wine and cheese, and mostly just spent time visiting. It’s been too long between visits with these folks!

A major rain and wind storm was entering the city, and as it approached, we parted ways for the evening. Dinner was at a place not far from our hotel. I had more cheese, because cheese in Europe is amazing and not like the bland stuff sold as cheese in the US. Same with wine. You can talk about Napa Valley all you want, but even the cheap Portuguese or Spanish wines are much better than the good CA stuff. So, I will eat my fill of local wine and cheese while I can!

Friday was Marnie’s birthday – the reason we are here. And, of course, it poured all day, with on and off torrential downpours. Not ideal. Matt said Portugal got over 2/3 of their annual rainfall over the course of this storm and I believe it.

Since Luke and I are up and about earlier than our friends, we went across the river to Mosteiro de Santa Clara-a-Velha. This was a really interesting place. It was built by a wealthy upper class woman. Hearing the documentary talk about how she was excommunicated because she diverted her patronage from the Franciscan monks to this cloister was unexpected. Seems a little petty and selfish, and the video definitely leaned into that perspective.

Inside what’s left of the convent, it’s truly remarkable how different it felt than typical cloisters which were built by men. This had a simple design, but with a scale that was grand and just enough ornamentation to make it visually appealing without being gaudy.

Coimbra is a college town and so we headed up the hill (so many hills!) to see the college. The library was the main attraction and it was (obviously) sold out for the day, so we got tickets for the next day and went over to see some of the college sights. they have a hall of minerals, a physics hall, and a cabinet of curiosities.

Luke and Marnie were on the hunt for the secreto pork cut – something unique to the Iberian peninsula. They didn’t quite find exactly what they were looking for, but they got close.

We got back to our hotel, with its 1920s decor, and marveled at the phone room, complete with physical, corded phone.

Oddly, we will be in Portugal twice this year. We are here now for Marnie’s birthday, and will be in the Azores over Thanksgiving for Luke’s 50th. The two trips will be wildly different.

We left Boston at 10:45 at night and landed just before 9am in Lisbon. Subtract a 5 hour time difference and 60-90 minutes from each end of the flight for meal service (who needs or expects dinner on a flight departing at 10:45 at night?!) and you will have not nearly enough time leftover for sleep.

Two sleep-deprived individuals successfully navigated the airport, subway, and train to make the journey from Lisbon to Coimbra.

Coimbra is cute. Hilly, of course, but cute. Several pedestrian-only streets, lots of pretty buildings, and stairs. So many stairs. Walking around here is a phenomenal workout. We spent the first afternoon mostly walking around to stay awake, pausing for a snack in an outdoor cafe.

Portugal has a musical tradition called fado, which is vocal music, usually somber or melancholic, accompanied by guitar (traditional and Portuguese). Coimbra has their own style of fado, exclusively performed by men. Think of the ballad Romeo might have sung to Juliet in her balcony and you get the idea. We went to a performance by local fado artists. It was quite nice, but sooo hard to stay awake (we were tired, warm, and listening to music…a recipe for sleepiness).

Luke found a fancy restaurant for dinner that is adjacent to a pottery factory (in fact, half of the factory was turned into a restaurant, so there are fires and kilns all over). Luke had duck, and I had barley in a herbed cheese sauce with mushrooms. It was all excellent, and the space was super cool.

Coimbra is a university town, so nearly everybody speaks English. We’ve learned how to say “thank you” (obrigada for me, obrigado for Luke), and that’s pretty much all we need. It is remarkably comfortable here. Maybe not quite big enough to be entertaining for the long haul (its 2021 population was 140,000), but certainly enjoyable enough for 4 days.