Day 49: Gois to Coimbra

April 19, 2023

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We rather liked the fact that at our guesthouse for last night we had an email that gave the code for the front gate, and then the key was in the front door, and we were told which room number was ours. So it was a touchless, in fact faceless, check in. We plugged our bikes in in the downstairs sitting room, went to our assigned room, and all was swell. The only off note was that we saw that previous people had been in the next room and this had not been made up yet, but more to the point their leftovers from breakfast were still in the breakfast room. This included milk, juice, and fruit salad, and we hoped these would not still be out for us by the next day.

Around midnight a mystery person came and cleared up the breakfast room. In the morning, a lady set out bread and coffee and such, but we observed fresh juice being added to the left juice of yesterday. So we passed on the milk, juice, and fruit salad. Just as we feel we can not afford to fall in sand, following someone on a bike to a remote shack, we can not afford tummy upset from possible hygiene failings. Nevertheless, we fuelled up enough for our relatively short and not really so hilly spin over to Coimbra.

The first part of our ride was not spectacular, but it did run by hills, some with clear cuts and some not, and it did afford glimpses of towns both down below as we climbed, and strung out on ridges above.

This road looks flat but it was climbing. With some experience now, I am no longer frustrated when the road curves up, only to disguise further curves up, and then more again. Now, I expect it, and when or if the road decides to start curving down, well great!

Clearcut beside the road. This might also be related to fire?

This iconic N2 marker is marked Lousa. We have been passing through the "Serra da Lousa", the Lousa mountains, and will be passing not far from the town of Lousa.

Looking down at a town. The town is not as down as some yesterday were, since we have not climbed as high.

We knew that we had enough food on board, but when we came to a nice looking grocery we sent Dodie in anyway. She came out with some fruit, pudding, cookies - not boring items, but she had the exciting news that there was a coffee/pastry bar just inside the door. I took some euros and went in for a look. One thing they had was eclair and I figured it should be tried, just to check if this really was France or not.

Ok, it's not France! I could tell because firstly the eclair chocolate was not glossy. Another major clue, the interior was essentially pastel de nata! That is not to say it was not good, but ok, it was not great.

Mimicking the Classens, we have some fun with mirrors.

The road from this point followed a river, but just the Rio Ceiro, which is a tributary of the major Rio Montego, which run in front of Coimbra. We could look down on the Ceiro, indicating of course that we were up high.

Looking down, we also spotted a stone house. It is not exactly low tech though, because look at those solar panels.

The road following the river was kind of uncomfortable, although it had some shoulder. The reason is that we were up against the cliff, giving the feeling of nowhere to hide from any heavy trucks, not to mention the concrete ditch, good for falling into.

The cliff had produced rockslides all the way along.

It was an ok road, but a little stressful.

As we drew a little nearer to Coimbra, the lane narrowed and the shoulder tended to evaporate. However, we were distracted by another giant bridge, one we definitely were not going on!

Finally a time came when the traffic was too heavy and the lane too narrow, so we sought refuge on the sidewalk. That did not last long, and we quickly found ourselves in a web of roundabout traffic.

Our goal was in sight, but traffic spaghetti lay between us and it.

I was grousing about having to hide on sidewalks, and Dodie said "What did you expect as we near a city?" "Improvement!" was my defiant response. As it happens, improvement did come, as we picked up a bike lane beside one of the limited access roads. Dodie said "See, they have a bikeway through everything, this is great" and I said "They have too many limited access roads if they are supposed to be an accessible ancient city".

To support my crabby position, I shot the following pictures of too much road spaghetti.

My assessment of Coimbra started to change when we got beyond the traffic spaghetti and came to the riverside and the riverside botanical gardens. Here we had a spacious and peaceful scene, and a great place to eat our lunch.

The beginning of the extensive botanical area by the river.

The city covers a hill, rising from the river, and we felt our Pension was going to be high up that hill. OK, we rode along the street that parallels the river and then took the first turn away from the river and presumably up the hill. Here is where the impression of the city went from cautiously improving to "OH WOW"! That street we had turned onto turned out to be a major traffic free one, lined with gorgeous buildings and filled with restaurants.

We carried on along this street until we came to a square with a beautiful church on one side, that we assumed was the cathedral. We walked through the square, assuming that our place would be onward and no doubt upward. But no, a double check showed that the church was Igreza Santa Cruz and our place was Pensao Santa Cruz - across the street!

Reception was on something like the third floor. I went up there and found the owner, Walter, who could only offer a weird spot in the third floor stairwell as a bike storage. Our room was a couple of flights higher yet. I went to look at the room, and oh, it was so great - with a view directly out to the square and the church.

So we took the bags of the bikes and I schlepped those plus the bikes themselves up all those stairs. It was kind of envigorating, pouring that much sweat!

Down in the square there was a guy playing a keyboard, with sort of easy listening background music. Just at that moment it sounded really good to me, and I found that instead of selling cds he had a much more portable mini thumb drive, with 31 of his selections. The man told me he was from Brazil. If any one wants an easy listening Girl from Ipanema, let me know!

We got out the backpack (in case of finding postcards!) and set off to explore Coimbra. Our first stop, of course, was across the street. The Santa Cruz church is integrated with a monastery, and while the church part was beautiful, the monastery was exceptional. It was probably the tile on the walls that set the tone in the monastery, but really the whole thing was amazing. For the first time since the cathedral in Porto, and even more than that, it felt like we had walked into that heart stopping pool of antiquity and beauty, where it is hard to understand how people could have created this.

Entering the main walking street of Coimbra.

A wedge shaped building and a street heading up.

The Santa Cruz church and monastery, and the Santa Cruz restaurant beside. We would go to hear fado at the restaurant later in the evening.

Stairs in our Pension, and the spot by the stairs where they suggested we keep our bikes.

The Brazilian keyboardist in our square.

You can sort of see my bike down there. It will be coming up!

The church and restaurant, from our window.

We crossed the square to the church and monastery, where we passed through the sacristy, the cloister, a sanctuary with relics, and other rooms. The sacristy in particular was beautifully done with tiles, and the cloister also, with blue tiled biblical scenes.

Tiled biblical scenes on the walls of the cloister.

The pyramidal containers in the sanctuary contain all manner of relics.

The Choir had a stunning amount of gold colour.

Hanging tapestries were very fragile looking.

Wall had lots of blue tile images like this.

Last look at treasures in the Sanctuary.

We left the monastery and wandered down the walking street. Then we took a turn, uphil, following a sign for the "Old" Cathedral. The sign led us up through narrow alleys. These could not be called streets exactly, since they included stairs. Along the way were shops, including some with gelato. We ducked into one, and were confronted by the product being in covered containers and the flavours being listed in Portuguese on a big chalk board. I chose "Coco" which i correctly assumed was coconut, and Dodie chose something ,much more exotic, which I am not sure how she managed to translate.

Dodie's was really full of flavour, and mine, while good, did not quite reach the standard of ones I had tried in Mexico. These did give us a boost to continue climbing in the hot sun. We arrived at the old cathedral to find the whole front yard cobbled area ripped up and being redone. However we were able to skirt the construction and slip into the church.

The old cathedral, with construction in front.

The cobbles are being hammered back in one by one.

Any one of these buildings is filled with a lot more stuff that can be absorbed in a day or two. We took a brief dive down one rabbit hole when one panel referred to the Martyrs of Morocco. We found out that Saints Berard, Otho, Peter, Accursius and Adjutus, venerated as saints by the Catholic Church, are also called Franciscan Protomartyrs as they were the first martyrs of the Franciscan Order, executed in Morocco on 16 January 1220.

It would take a while to really appreciate one of these churches.

We are not sure what this relic is, but you can see the skull inside.

An example of the old tiles in the Cathedral

Interesting stained glass. Stained glass is not so common in these churches,

The valuable carving and painting of these churches is subject to decay. Some can be restored and maybe some not. Below you see an exterior sculpture pretty far gone, but also some stairs being protected, and a painting being restored.

We left the old cathedral and headed through the picturesque streets to the new cathedral.

Here at last is the "new" cathedral.

The new cathedral was quite amazing, for two things. First was the number of cherubs, which must have been in the thousands. They were really bubbling out of everywhere. Second was the number of Our Lady of Good Death figures. Between them, they made this a really unique place.

The main altar area of the church, seems to lack a Jesus or Mary figure.

Our place. That open window on the left is ours. The bikes are up there!

Fado is very big in Coimbra, as can be seen from this souvenir shop display. We caught a performance at the cafe across our square.

The atmospheric cafe is part of the monastery building.

The main instrument of Fado is the Portuguese guitar. The performance also had a singer and a standard guitar player.

Today's ride: 51 km (32 miles)
Total: 2,177 km (1,352 miles)

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Scott AndersonCoimbra’s a special place, alright. If we ever make it back to this part of Portugal this would be top on the list.
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