Campervans were just left to
sort themselves out here – no demarcated pitches and as we arrived late on a Saturday
evening, we were fortunate to find a place to squeeze in!
We caught the bus the next
morning and entered the old historic centre via the Almedina gate – the proper
start of the tourist route!
This lets on to a steep
climb up to the centre of the old city, and as we puffed our way uphill we were
serenaded by the sounds of Fado (apparently Coimbra is the birthplace of a
particular style of Fado) from a nearby music store – and university students
selling postcards to raise money for their end of year celebrations. We bought
some off these two – as much in admiration that the student body is still
content to wear the formal black gown (in the stifling heat in the city) as
well as help fund the end of year bash!
Coimbra is stuffed with
historical things to see (unsurprising given it was once Portugal’s mediaeval
capital and built on Roman and Moorish settlements!) so we started at the Museu
Nacional de Machado de Castro, which not only offers a well thought out and
staged route across the millennia, starting with some amazing Roman ruins, but
has fabulous views across the city and a good restaurant. The Roman
cryptoporticos are in amazing condition and although partly restored, are very
evocative of the scale of the original forum that would have been above them –
helped no doubt by the clever lighting.
The rest of the museum is
dedicated to a combination of sculptures, religious paintings and relics and a
small oriental collection of artefacts. Suffice to say, that by the time we had
looked around the roman cryptoporticos and later sculptures (including these
amazing clay figures of the 12 disciples, restored from thousands of fragments)
we were ready for a break and some lunch – with an amazing view of the city!
After lunch (which included
some slabs of leitaõ – suckling pig – that I’d been after for a while – yum!)
we finished off the rest of the museum, (not all of it as digestible as lunch!)
before heading off to admire the ‘big’ items in the historic centre – the ‘old’
university and the two cathedrals. I can’t help but see these immense places of
worship in the same way as I look at Greek or Roman temples – struck by the
power of those that commissioned them and are often formally remembered, and
the huge scale of labour required to build them – by the largely un-remembered.
The ‘old’ university was the
much more impressive building for me – spread out as it is over a number of
faculty buildings. The outside of the fabulously named ‘faculty of letters’ was
fronted by a row of men (of course) of letters…
The winner though in scale
and wow factor was the Patio des Escolas, set around three sides of an enormous
square, itself overlooking the city. We were intending on visiting the amazing
library here, but were put off by the large number of group tours lining up
behind various flags and brollies…
After a walk back down the
hill the old city is set on, we chanced across a craft market adjacent to the
river Mondego. Packed with stalls from a range of small towns and villages in
the Coimbra municipality, this particular one made me think of the UK advert
for a Yorkshire based internet provider…
Had we left and caught the
bus back then, we would have been spared the disappointment of the botanical
gardens. They may have been impressive once, but after a very hot, indirect (and
so a little testy!) route to find them, their charm had faded and much of what
we saw was weed covered, closed, or given over to an aerial adventure high wire
park, and we left wondering whether the steep climb back up the hill had been
worth it. Still, we did get to see this example of a ‘república’ (student
house) – the first one we’d seen not covered in graffiti – something Coimbra is
apparently famed for but, having seen the quality of street art in Sesimbra,
what we saw here looked a bit like the uninspiring urban scrawl gracing many a
British street.
Being a Sunday, the bus
service was limited, and we were very lucky to get the last bus back to the
campsite the other side of the city. This gave us an unexpected insight to the
rest of the city as the inbound 20 minute ride into the old centre was replaced
by a 50 minute trip round a variety of housing estates and shopping malls.
Still, it did give the visit a more authentic feel – a bit like visiting Oxford
from a short distance outside, only to return via Blackbird Leys!
Next stop – more culture in
Porto!
S
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