Tintinburgh | Portugal | 2019 | Coimbra

Coimbra

I stayed in Coimbra only for one day - and I think that is quite reasonable amount of time to spend there unless you want to see something specific. I was staying there from Sunday to Monday and it was very sleepy (but there was some sort of festival next to the river)

Train station

For some reason they have two train stations - Coimbra A and Coimbra B. The train from Lisboa goes to Coimbra B which is in the middle of nowhere. Even worse there is no bus so I had to wait for about 15 minutes to take another train to Coimbra A... When I was leaving it was worse because it was some sort of holiday and there was no train from city centre to the Coimbra B 😢 so I had to take an Uber... 🤦

Arch

I did not really research anything about the city before coming - I just looked at map and saw its between Lisboa a Pôrto so I was nicely surprised by the architecture - right after leaving Coimbra A you are led into these super cosy streets - the nice thing is that they have "smooth" lane in the middle so I was not making noise with my suitcase. I think more cities should do that.

Hostel

My hostel (Hostel Sé Velha) was right in the center, up on the hill, so I had to climb there because the old town is very vertical... So I got all sweaty and then I went into some cafe place next to the hostel and everyone was laughing at me 😿.

I was very happy with the quality of the hostel. There was this couple who thought they will have fancy dinner - home made salmon but they did not realize that there is no kitchen - only microwave in the hostel si it was very funny to watch them eat microwaved salmon with wine and pretend its all romantic...