22 | July | 2023 | The Cannon Family's travel blog

We started the day with the buffet breakfast overlooking what we have learned is the second biggest saltwater pool in Europe – who knew? It was a lovely morning and we were well fed, packed, and ready to go in no time. Destination: Porto, about 3.5 hours to the north. But that is a very boring lenght of time to drive, so we randomly picked a city part way there to stop and have lunch. And thus we discovered Coimbra.

It is a lovely university town famed for it’s baroque library (which we weren’t able to visit) and it’s cathedral (which we were). We started lunch at a little cafe calle Sete which had a great gluten free menu -and even gluten free beer! Frank wandered from his fish fetish and had a suckling pig pie and I managed to find…. vegetables! Not something common on Portuguese menus apparently, I had a plate of sauteed zucchini and other veg along with small potatoes stuffed with local cheese. Yum!!

Then off to discover the cathedral. It was well worth the 2.5 they asked as a donation. Dating back to the 12th century, the cloisters and tilework were beautiful. And the gothic alterpiece is hard to describe. Even the photos don’t do it justice.

We wandered around town a little longer, realized that the entry to the baroque library was on the hour and that we would be late checking in if we stayed for the next tour so off we went to continue our drive north.

The AirBnB we had rented was a tad tricky to find but we managed and our gracious host showed us all the secrets to a comfy stay. The location is absolutely perfect – great views of the some of the bridges and just minutes to the center of town. We made a stop at the fanciest grocery store I’ve been in since Wegmans to pick up the breakfast staples for the rest of the stay. Great GF options but the place still smelled funny due to the slabs of the ubiquitous salt cod that the Portuguese seem to eat daily.

And then we just walked all over the city. Into the crowded shopping district – where we found the blue tiles of the Chapel of Santa Caterina, one of 5 blue tiled churches in the city. Then down to the even more crowded Ribeira area where we sat with some sangria and watched the people go by. Then we wandered to find some dinner and wound up at an excellent Italian restaurant where I had crazy good linguine carbonara and Frank had pizza diavolo – thus going 0/2 for fish dishes today.

A wander back to our flat brought us on the giant screen set up in a local square where they were having a Grease sing along – showing the movie with Portugues subtitles and encouraging everyone to sing by having the lyrics of the movie appear on screen in VERY LARGE bubble letters. It was soooo much fun.