Coimbra, Portugal

 

Overview

Coimbra is a city in central Portugal situated inland between Porto and Lisbon, but slightly closer towards Porto. It has a population of around 150,000 people which is pretty small given the size of the place. For comparison for those familiar with the UK, Chester has a population of around 357,000 and by British standards it's a fairly small town when compared to places like Liverpool or Manchester. Although Coimbra, population wise at least, is pretty small, it feels like a much bigger place when you're there!

Relatively low population doesn't stop it from being a pretty lively place though! Oh no, no, no ... on the day we visited there were two festivals / evens at the river front, street performers were out, sun was out but with it being September it wasn't too hot and everyone was having a jolly good time, including us!

FUN FACT: Coimbra used to be the Portuguese capital between the years of 1139 and 1385!

The River

We parked up on a medium sized car park by the river and soon found out that they had a sports event there with the music blasting out of the speakers. They certainly weren't trying to keep a low profile and it looked pretty cool. We ventured in on our way back to the car later and it seemed to be mainly about promoting sport for children and getting kids involved with various physical activities, it was organised by the city council and didn't cost anything to go in or to participate. Kids could try all sorts of sports from karate to grass hockey, there were a couple of stages with cheerleaders and dancers performing throughout the day.

Our attention turned to a pretty cool foot bridge which wasn't far from where the sports event was happening and given the fact that the river is a pretty prominent part of the city, it made sense to venture on and take a closer look. At this point we've only been in Coimbra for about 10 minutes and it has already started to make a very good impression on us. Spoiler alert, it was only going to get better. As we carried on across the bridge we couldn't help but to notice that there was something in the distance ... a water feature on the river itself. Now ... water features aren't something rare these days but I'm not used to seeing them on rivers, you'd usually see them in city certes, parks etc, but here it was on the river and it was pretty big.

We then started to hear a different type of music coming from the other river bank, which was convenient as that's where we were heading anyway. As we were getting closer to the other side of the river we noticed this water basket ball pitch thing place. I have no idea what that sport is called so if you do then drop us a comment, I think I've seen it on TV once or twice, but I've never seen one in real life and there was one on the side of the river clearly for free public use and I found that pretty cool.

We got to the other side of the river and now it was quite clear where the other stage was. As we got closer a nice lady approached us and said something in Portuguese but sadly our Portuguese isn't good enough for us to have understood what she was saying so we said that we can't understand and she then explained everything in English. It was some sort of multi-national event with the local university, the Portuguese government and the EU having representations amongst others. Although we didn't have much time that day as this visit was only a stop off on our way to the airport, we were interested in the upcoming performance by a brass band so we sat down and enjoyed the atmosphere. We barely walked 100 meters from our car and so far we have come across two pretty cool events, a cool foot bridge (I love bridges), a funky water feature and a water basketball pitch place thing ... good start to the day in my book!

Heading for the centre

Having had a gentle walk along the river side and enjoyed some music, it was time to head deeper into the heart of the city. As we started to walk along the main roads and then across one of the main bridges, I couldn't help but to notice that despite it being around lunch time on a Sunday, the roads were nor that busy. Traffic was flowing pretty freely and there was not a hint of hold ups anywhere, congestion is something that in the UK is just a normal thing pretty much on any day. Look at this pretty sizeable intersection, not a car in sight!

This Choo Choo Truck-Train was parked up just before the bridge, we didn't have the time but it looks like a pretty cool thing to go on, by my standards anyway. 

If you don't fancy a tour on the Choo Choo Truck-Train or CCTT for short (no it's not really called that but I feel like it's a fitting name so I'll stick with it), then you can always opt for an e-bike or an e-scooter. They're becoming more and more popular across the world as a more eco-friendly mode of transport around the central parts of various cities and I'm all for it. We saw these in Cambridge and Krakow in Poland, I know they have them in Lisbon and a lot of other places. They are relatively cheap, pay as you go and you can set up the app on the spot within a few minutes, you just need a smartphone and a credit / debit card. A word of warning though, the e-scooters are a bit rough on cobbles!

Pastries!

If you travel to Portugal there are a number of things you just need to do, for me the top number one thing to do was to have a real Portuguese Pastel de Nata. I managed to tick that one off in Porto (video coming to our YouTube channel soon after this blog goes live so make sure to check it out), and as we were heading deeper into the heart of the city I spotted a café with a sign saying "Queijadas" in the shop front and my eyes light up as that was high up on my list as well. It's essentially a Portuguese cheese case but it's soooo nice. If you have an opportunity to have one whilst you're there, DO IT! These things are amazing!

Culture and Architecture

Once you're done stuffing your face with pastel de nata and queijadas, you will undoubtedly turn your attention to the beautiful architecture, what region specific goodies are in the shops and what else is around. One thing that is evident when you look at what wares the touristy shops have on offer is how deeply engraved within the Portuguese culture ceramics are. There are tiles and other ceramics for sale everywhere, it's like a Portuguese equivalent of Swarovski. There are tiles for sale to create a nice mosaic, ones with nice pictures on them individually and other types, too many to mention really. The variety is huge and when you look at the buildings around Portugal you'll see similar tiles all over the place.

Oh and they love patterns on the ground as well, not just on the walls, if you've been to Brazil you'll notice similarities between the two, which makes sense given how the two are connected historically and culturally.

As you make your way through the narrow streets of what looks like the old town, you'll be surrounded by beautiful stone buildings, and those that have been renovated or built later, I really like those painted white. It all looks very classy and beautiful, certainly has impressed me and we found ourselves looking up as much as just ahead.

I don't know what it is but everywhere we go recently is dug up, road works and ground works everywhere, is it just us or do you guys find the same when you go away?

Although a lot of the buildings we went past on the way towards the top looked quite old and like they've seen a lot of things over the years, you do come across renovated or newer ones as well. I think they blend in quite nicely into the scenery though.

The cherry on top of the cake was definitely the Paco das Escolas which is a sizeable square at the university of Coimbra. It's positioned at the top of the hill with beautiful views across the city and down the river. The buildings there are really well maintained and you call tell that a lot of effort and money will have gone into creating that place, it's really a work of art. If you're not that interested in the architecture of the place you should go and check it out for the views alone anyway.

 The Botanical Garden

Once we made it to the top, had a look around and took some images it was time to start heading back and think about somewhere to eat as I didn't fancy my chances at the airport or on the plane. In most places botanical gardens are something that you have to pay for to go in, which is fine because they take quite a lot of work to maintain. Therefore I thought we were going to have to give it a miss this time as if I'm paying for something I want to make sure I get my money's worth out of it, however it was more or less in the direction in which we were heading anyway so we went to have a look. It turns out that the gardens in Coimbra are free to enter and despite it being a Sunday in September, they were pretty quiet which was perfect.

Despite being free to enter, the gardens were in pretty good shape and a lot of the shrubs and plants were nicely kept and manicured. The glasshouse which you can see above was shut on the day when we visited but to be honest not much was in there anyway. To be honest we didn't really know why they may want a glasshouse in a climate like this but having thought about it, maybe they keep some more sensitive plants in there over winter? I'm not sure, it certainly wasn't cold outside during the day when we were there but you wouldn't expect it to be in September to be fair.

There were some pretty chunky trees in there (Jo for scale), some really nice paths, some benches to sit on, a water feature, all the things you'd expect in a place like this, and it all looked pretty lovely. It's the sort of place where you could go and just relax without anyone bothering you and without the noise that comes with a busy city life.

As we were making our way down the garden paths back towards the river we ended up walking through a mini bamboo forest which was pretty cool. The last time we went through one was in the botanical gardens in Rio de Janeiro but those gardens were much bigger (and you had to pay to go in, but it was worth every penny). There's something nice about huge bamboo bending tall over your head (Jo for scale again).

 Food

Shortly after the bamboo forest we got to the boundary of the botanical gardens and search for food has began. The streets were pretty quiet and it was far more residential where we ended up. We couldn't really see that many places where we could eat so we decided to turn towards the larger bridge where we went across earlier in the day and just started walking. Soon after Jo spotted a menu outside a building, it looked promising but we couldn't see a restaurant as such inside. We peeked through the door and to the right there was what looked like a pretty simple reception desk, but not one you'd expect at a restaurant, with a tuk-tuk next to it and to the right there were a couple of random petrol pumps (obviously not operational) along with a spiral staircase. I can't remember exactly if we saw a sign but we went up the staircase and that's where the restaurant was. There were some weird sculptures about but overall the place had a funky bistro / bar feel to it without being over the top. Later we found out that the place is actually a hotel with a restaurant attached, at least that's what I understand it to be. Anyway, Jo wants to stay there next time we visit Coimbra. Food was priced well, it wasn't expensive but it wasn't ultra cheap either, it was delicious though so big thumbs up from us and we can definitely recommend it. You can check them out here.

We'll be back

Once we had some good food at Bixos (name of the place mentioned above) and couldn't finish our portions, it was time to start heading back to the car (which by this stage of the trip looked like it's been off-roading in the Sahara for a year) and head over to the airport to catch our flight back to Manchester. Out of all the bigger cities that we saw on this trip Coimbra was definitely our favourite. We prefer to live more out of town, but if we had to move into a city somewhere, Coimbra would be that place for both of us and we're looking forward to being back there in the future to explore some more.

If you want to see what we got up to before coming to Coimbra then make sure to check out our YouTube channel for the vlogs from the rest of this week (coming in the weeks after this blog goes live). 

Ate a proxima!