Coimbra

I spent my last night in Porto with Mia and my roommates du jour, Wade and Dominique from Vancouver.  We're brought together by our mutual disdain of our now ex-roommate "Wonderwall," who no longer wears shoes, and puts his feet on the table.  I have had more conversations with him in his underwear than in pants, which he has not changed since arrival.  The pants, not the underwear.  I wasn't looking that closely.  Wade and Dominique report that everyone who has witnessed these Australians with their schmoozing and guitar playing has turned to the german girls to ask them what the fuck they're doing hanging out with these guys.  No one seems to understand.

We are laughing heartily.   This is my gift in life: I bring others to say what they are thinking but wouldn't dare say out loud.  I am a muse.  So I buy my new friends a drink at the hostel bar.  This is more generous than it sounds at €1.50 a glass, but they're tickled anyway.  We spent the night at that bar, laughing with Mia who has been my buddy over the last couple of days, and when Australian #2 pulls out his iPhone to play "wonderwall" on speaker while lackadaisically and Inattentively playing uno with the German girls we can't hold it in any more.  We're dying, and I call my boyfriend and tell him he has to make a video of himself playing wonderwall for me.  He and our friend Mike oblige.  I'm a very lucky woman.

I absolutely LOVED Porto.  But it was time to move on.

Coimbra is between Porto and Lisbon.  It's the university town and I believe used to be one of the old capitals of Portugal.

The hostel in Porto is on top of a hill, and I'm happy that the train station is DOWN the hill this time, because coming up it with the luggage was a bitch.  I get to the train station with plenty of time, and the line to buy the ticket is LONG.  I feel like somewhere there is a machine I should be able to use, but I haven't been able to figure these things out yet.  I quickly realize that there's no way in hell I'm making the train at this point, but luckily there's free wifi, and I see that the bus station is a 7-minute walk away, and the next bus is in 1/2 hour.

Of course, that bus station is 7 minutes UP the hill.  Fuck.

I make it in time, and I don't know why I didn't research better.  The bus was practically empty, cheaper, comfortable, and the ride is shorter and goes directly to Coimbra with no stops.  I got to lie down and sleep.  It arrives early.

I take a taxi to the hostel.  It's going up, down, left, right,  up, down again.  Coimbra is hilly as FUCK.   And I'm in the university area, With the old town far below.  So glad I had the sense to take a taxi, but I was further getting the sense that I was NOT going to want to deal.

I've got a little over a week left, and I'm TIRED.  Not even tired of traveling.  Tired of WALKING.  tired of old towns.  Tired of churches.  At this point, a church had better be spec-fucking-tabular to excite me.  I'm over it.  I'm now planning my days around what I'm going to eat.  And truth be told, that's really just fine by me.  The food is the best part!

The Luggage hostel is spectacular.  Were it not for the fact that I'm in a dorm room with bunk beds, you'd think I were in some southern estate or a Cuban mansion.  It's GORGEOUS.  perched on a hill, with a view of the city.  Completely decked out with mid century modern furniture, a patio in the front of the house, one in the back, and two living rooms.  In the early 70s, the fascist regime commandeered this house for their headquarters, and there are jail cells in the basement.  Aaaaaaaand I'm only paying about $20 a night, including a full breakfast.  But the BEST PART about this place is that because it's not in the center of town, it isn't attracting the backpacker type.  Quite frankly, it doesn't seem to attract too many people.  This place is practically empty.  Coimbra, being a university town, is a little dead in August.  Most of western Europe, if inland, is dead in August.  Everyone goes to the coast for vacation.

A quick google search gets me to a Tasca just down the road.  I order their Brazilian feijoada and a water.  The menu says its €6, and he brings me a cazuela (casserole dish?) FULL of it.  I was really hoping this feijoada didn't have innards, because traditionally they do, but I poked around and the black-stained meat seemed like flesh. And not offal.  Whatever, it all tasted like meat-soaked beans.  It was great.  He says "no coffee? No dessert?" And when I say no, he charges me only €5.  I ask if he's sure.  I still can't figure this out.... During the day, is water and coffee included?  This is the second time I've refused coffee or dessert and have been charged LESS than the posted price.  Whatever, I love this place.

I google map my way to the center.  Instead of mapping the route, I just follow the little blue dot.  But The roads are all twisty and windy and dead end in certain places and Google tells you nothing about elevation.  I'm walking up hills, down hills, back up again.  It takes me forever.  I'm unimpressed when I get there.  Boo.  I go to dinner at the place the hostel recommends.  I am also unimpressed.  I get the appetizer platter even though I'm a control freak and only hear a couple of things I think i like.  I'll be carefree!  Well, evidently pâté here means mayo-based salad.  I hate surprise mayo.  There's some fritter situation which I like less than surprise mayo.  The padrón peppers are under salted and over-oiled.  It's fine. I'll live.  I try the local digestive, licor beiras.  It's watered down and kind of bland,  One mediocre meal in weeks.  I'll live.

So the next day I plan only to go read in the sun.  I'm not going to even venture out to the closest coast, Figueira da Foz, about an hour away.  The hostel makes me a reservation to see fado, which I've never done.  I'm sure it will be terrible, but it's only €10, and usually these things accompany a shitty dinner reservation for much more money, and what else am I doing?

I had booked a third night in Coimbra at a different hostel a day earlier, and I call them to cancel it. I decide to go to Lisbon a day early.  I speak to them in Spanish, I tell them I'm cancelling, they say no problem.  No email confirmation.  I email them twice to ask for the confirmation of cancellation, which they ignore.  It's only $20 a night, and if that's the price to pay to get out of here early, that's fine by me, although I'm definitely complaining to the booking agent.  Because that's what I do.

I'm in a 6-bed dorm room and on the first night, one tiny Japanese girl shows up with a rather large, old-school, hard-sided luggage.  No wheels.  It's PACKED with about 100 space bags, and she's digging through them to find her glasses.  She can't, and immediately goes to sleep at 9 pm.  This is GREAT, I think.  That is, until 8am where she is desperately trying to get all of those crinkly, plastic space bags back into her suitcase, which she CANT, and the locks don't seem to work.  I was going to ask her to take it outside, but it's like waiting for the bus.  You wait long enough, you just think it's going to show up.  This bitch was trying to close that thing for 40 MINUTES.  I want to get up and stuff her in there and lock her in.  pro tip: if you need space bags to get all your shit into a piece of luggage, YOU HAVE TOO MUCH SHIT.

I plan my whole day around getting lunch, to the only place Trip advisor highly recommends.  I don't think this is a big food town.  I finally figured out the easiest way to get to the old town, and of COURSE I don't have to go up any hills, just around the perimeter.  You know, math.  You never really need to go up to go down. Getting to the restaurant, that's a different story.  It's on some tiny street, and I can't figure out the most direct route.  It takes me 40 minutes to an hour, instead of the 20 it should have.  Even that doesn't bother me, because I was out in the sun and this was basically my activity.  Working up an appetite, working on my tan.

I get there and it's closed.  I'm nonplussed for some reason.  I wind up at a tiny little place called 007 around the corner where the day's menu is scribbled on white paper.  These places are like a beacon to me.  It's full 9of Portuguese people.  I order the chanfana, a local delicacy of roast kid in wine sauce.  Another enormous cazuela of meat, more boiled potatoes.  It's delicious.  You could stew dog shit in Wine and rosemary and it would be delicious, but this was really Nice.  More people should eat goat.

I go to the fado show. It's run by the cultural center.  Fado is a portugal's sad, evocative, traditional guitar music, kind of like Spain's flamenco, without the dancing.  In Coimbra, it's traditionally sung by men, where in the rest of the country, it's traditionally sung by women.  And in Coimbra, it's a serenade, either to a woman, or to the town, or to the university which fado is a big part of.  There's a special, wide fado guitar, accompanied by a traditional Spanish flamenco guitar.  The set was about an hour, and I really enjoyed it.  It was was really beautifully sung, and the guitar playing was lovely, especially since all I'd heard on a guitar for the past week was "wonderwall."  Certainly exceeded my very low expectations.  Afterwards, they invite you into the patio for a tiny shot of port, which I quickly down and walk out.  I wanted to make it to the the pastry shop near the hostel before it closed.

Right before I get to the pastry shop, it occurs to me that I never paid for the show.  I had a reservation, and I noticed that the people in line with me we're giving the lady some paper ticket, but when I was about to tell the woman at the door that my hostel made a reservation, she cut me off and said, "American? Please fill out this survey when the show is over."  I sat down and figured they'd charge me later, but they never did and I totally forgot about it.  The hostel didn't pay on my behalf, either.  I felt really badly; I enjoyed the show!

I go to a nearby bar to watch the sunset in their very large patio overlooking the city.  One vinho verde, filled to the rim, 90 euro cents.  I can't believe this town.  I walk back to the hostel, and I have a glass of port with the owner.  I decided to skip dinner and drunkenly FaceTime friends in my now COMPLETELY UNOCCUPIED dorm room while I stuff my face with Portuguese desserts. I don't even know what they are, some kinds of cake with a lot of bright yellow stuff on it.  Portuguese desserts, unless chocolate based, are almost always filled with and topped with, some combination of egg yolk, cream, sugar.  Both of these cakes were great, and I got through about 2/3 of each of them.  Because it's a totally reasonable, grown up decision to have wine and cake for dinner.

I was so excited to have my own room.  That is, until about 1 am where all of the sugar I consumed (I was warned by Mia that vinho verde was particularly difficult on the gut but I did not heed her warning) burned my insides.  And simultaneously, I got it into my head that this lovely hostel was too good to be true.  Remember that movie "hostel"? The one where everyone at the hostel was tortured?  Yeah, clearly that was what was going to happen to me.  It was too quiet and peaceful and perfect there.  So I didn't sleep for two and a half hours, and I had a blazing headache and indigestion.

I swear off vinho verde and desserts, and I excitedly head towards Lisbon.