School kids celebrating Carnival

Bridge at Pinhao

Douro River Valley

Coimbra is a university town; in fact, it's the 2^nd oldest in Europe after Bologna. Founded in 1290, it used a palace as its beginning, adding on until the 1500's. We had enough time to visit 3 main buildings in the university complex before it started to rain.

The most impressive was the Baroque Library or King Joao's Library. Talk about the quintessential library setting! Consisting of 2 main rooms on the ground floor, the walls of dark wood with gold leaf trim (brought from Brazil) exuded rich and exotic vibes. The South American wood reading tables are inlaid with different woods and complemented by silver ink wells. All of the 30,000 books there date before 1755 and are leather-bound. Below the library is a prison, now turned into a research room for students who have the right credentials.

The small but opulent St. Michael's chapel has a unique 18^th century organ with pipes that stick out like trumpets ready to herald the royalty or maybe the church leaders. The king and his family sat at the back of the chapel in a high box with a great view of the richly ornamented altar---lots of gold leaf!

Our place of residence for the night was at the Melia Palacio de Lousa, a hotel renovated from a palace situated about 30 minutes from Coimbra. It had a beautiful entrance and really picturesque marble stairs, and the rooms were very warm and inviting. After being in the Lisbon hotel with marble altars for beds and one inch pillows, we were thrilled with the soft mattress and downy pillows we found. The town of Lousa is pretty small and because it is some distance away from a major town, the hotel was very reasonable. We wrestled with lots of narrow side streets and lots of places to get turned around and lost. We drove around and up and down streets for half an hour before finding our way to the main road.

At last we were headed in the right direction but unfortunately missed our turnoff for the Douro River Valley. I don't think it was marked, but we turned back around and managed to twist and turn and fall onto the right road and by sheer luck came out at the correct junction and stumbled our way into Pinhao. We passed up 3 restaurants and decided we had to take the next one we came to as we walked through town because we both had to use the bathroom. The restaurant was full of locals (a good sign). We ate the only thing they had on the menu which was a traditional Portugese dinner. First they brought out bread and green olives, then roast pork covered with turnip greens, then lamb with potatoes, onions, carrots and green peppers, then lima bean soup with sausage and ham, then fruit and flan and coffee (they call the half milk and half coffee “galao”). Oh, my! The owner asked us if we had a room for the night (he had one available); we didn't, so we looked at it and took it. Very inexpensive and it included breakfast! We had to walk our dinner off for a couple of hours before going to bed!

Unfortunately, we could stay only one night in Pinhao, but the next day was partly sunny, so we really enjoyed our drive out of the valley. It was a jumble quilt of grape vineyards the entire way and as high as the top of the mountains. Spectacular! Our little road was like a snake as it made its way through the valley, following the curves of the river. Sometimes we were at the river's level and other times we were at the top of the mountain, always on a road that curls back toward itself as it swings up and down. After a couple of hours, we found a restaurant that had a beautiful view, so we stopped for lunch. Not being able to read Portugese, we guessed at something that sounded like seafood and were rewarded with a huge pot of shrimp, clams, mussels, calamari, and crab all together with rice. It could have fed 4 people. We did our best, but we couldn't get it all eaten.

Now off to Porto to turn in our car and see what we can find there.