Kathleen
6/1/2013 – Coimbra
Coimbra is Lisbon’s university town, and this is one of the oldest continually operational universities in the wolrd….started in 1290 (Wow!). We had a lovely little apartment right outside the old walls and we enjoyed making ourselves some hot soup for lunch before venturing out to explore the town… the university area was quite quiet as it must be summer break there, but it was fun to wander around the main campus square, with excellent views over the city, and we were treated to a newly married young couple coming out of the main church and being showered with flower petals and fraternity chants. We checked out the pretty botanical gardens and the acqueduct before heading back down the hill to the main part of town. Still looking for something to do, we crossed over to the river front, where all of the Sunday action, we found, was at. There was a market an eateries and bars, and a park with a gigantic topiaryish bear – I tried to get Steve to climb up for a picture but he refused to get in the way of the 12 kids who were already climbing on said bear. We were also treated to a young girls’ dance recital, which consisted of many groups of different ages performing to different songs. We caught the finale, which included all of the girls (there had to be about 150 of them) up on stage, moving in unison to some American pop song or another. It was pretty neat. Lastly, we headed to a delightful pedestrian bridge which spanned the entire river and had very nice views back over the hilly town. A typical Portuguese dinner at a local courtyard cafe completed the day and we felt that this was a very nice, old, but very much alive town.