A Trip to Portugal (page 7 of 11)
Day Six – Coimbra
By the time we woke up and showered, it was too late for breakfast. We went to a nearby pastelaria for a pastry and a coffee. We went back to the hotel to gather our things and check out. Wanting to leave the horrid hotel behind, we went to the turismo to ask them if we could leave our bags there for a while. They said yes. I love turismos!
Besides fish, Peniche’s best known export is its lace. Next to the turismo was a lace-making school. A group of mostly older women were gathered there making lace. It’s hard to describe the actual process. They
each had a dozen or so knobs, each with a thin thread wound around it. They were working over a table with dozens of nails. They would use the knobs to wrap the thread in intricate patterns around the nails. I have no idea how the whole thing stuck together.
We walked back to the point at the north end of the town, but instead of walking all the way out we walked along the road for a while. There were a few guys out fishing off the cliffs, which was cool. There were also strange rock things on the side of the road. They were spread out, but appeared to line the road every hundred yards. If anyone can identify them, I’d appreciate it. We wandered back to town, picked up our bags, and went to the bus station. We bought tickets and boarded the bus to Coimbra. The trip to Coimbra was the longest yet,
clocking in at around three hours.
When we were planning this trip, we decided that we wanted to stay in at least one town on the Atlantic with a big fishing industry. We tend to like that sort of thing. The obvious choices that were on our Lisbon to Porto route were Peniche and Nazare. Lonely Planet made Nazare sound more like a glitzy Atlantic resort town, while Peniche retained at least some of the characer of the villages before the tourism industry exploded in Portugal. The latter sounded more up our alley, so we chose to spend a
night in Peniche. As our bus rumbled through Nazare, though, I thought we might’ve made a mistake, especially after our less than pleasant digs in Peniche. Nazare did appear to value tourism over fishing as its major industry, but the beach looked really big and pretty, and there weren’t any large resort-style hotels that I feared might be there. I’m sure it’s uncomfortably packed in the summer, but it looked nice in March.
We got to the bus terminal in Coimbra. Our hotel was on the same street as the terminal, but six pretty long blocks away. My first impression of Coimbra was dirt. Diesel buses clogged the street making the air feel dirtier than New York. It was not a pleasant experience. Fortunately our hotel, Hotel Oslo, was very nice. Judging by the price posted on the door they heavily discount their out-of-season rates. The shower was hot and powerful, so we both took much needed showers after the bus trip. The hotel also featured cable TV. The war had started, and we felt very out of touch. It was frustrating being isolated from almost all English media when the most important story of the year was happening. We tried to catch up by watching CNN for a while before heading out into the city.
My impressions of Coimbra changed drastically at night. We wandered around the streets of our hotel. Once again there were many pedestrian streets lined with shops. We found a particularly impressive cathedral that had been partially converted into a restaurant. The restaurant portion wasn’t the main (I don’t know proper cathedral terminology) alter, but it had high vaulted ceilings and the same gothic architecture. We got some coffee and watched the people in the square outside.
After much indecision, we decided to have dinner in a restaurant whose name I have forgotten but which I will never forget. To enter the restaurant we went up a set of stairs and down a hallway. We passed the kitchen and smiled at the one woman who was there toiling over the pots and pans. The restaurant was packed with people, including a large table of 15 Brits who, we found out later, were in town for some sort of Blues festival. Edie and I decided for the second and final time not to eat fish. We each ordered a different variety of pork. I ordered the roasted pork loin and Edie ordered Portugese pork, unsure of what she would get.
What we both got was an amazing meal. It started with vegetable soup which, like all the other vegetable soup we had, was nothing like vegetable soup in the US. It was a vegetable broth with some leafy green things floating in it. Very good, but not very substantial. Anyway, it was brought to our table in a steaming cauldron and ladled into bowls on our plates. We ate this with the best bread we had in Portugal. (An aside on bread: In Portugal, you will be charged for the bread and anything else they put on the table before the meal. You aren’t charged for what you don’t eat, and bread’s cheap, but it’s something to be aware of if you go.) The entrees followed. My roast pork was okay, but a bit dry. Edie’s, on the other hand, was amazing. It turned out to be cubed pork that was probably pan seared and sauteed in sauce. The sauce was a red wine based sauce that was slightly spicy and incredibly delicious. Both dishes were served family style along with five sides: french fries, rice, mashed potatoes, some cooked cabbage dish, and (gasp!) green beans. All were very good, and we especially appreciated the first real serving of vegetables we’d seen since arriving in Portugal. All this plus a bottle of wine, a bottle of water, and two small glasses of port after the meal came to exactly twenty euros.
The dining room was small, bright and warm. It was filled with cheerful, chatty people. Although the food wasn’t the best we had, the meal was definately the culinary highlite of the trip. We had planned to do more exploring after dinner, but having lingered for quite a while we happily went back to the hotel and collapsed.