Portugal Vacation - Aveiro and Coimbra

7/8/17

We left Portugal early Saturday and made our winding trip down to Tomar via a hired car from Blacklane (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED).  Early in the planning stages of the trip, Allison had wanted to rent a car so we could make the drive from Porto to Lisbon.  THANK GOD WE DID NOT DO THAT.  Sintra would have ended our marriage/lives, but that's a story for another day.

We had originally planned to see Braga, but scrapped that idea after seeing a very similar church in the Azores.  We audibled the morning of and chose to make a quick stop in Aveiro instead.  Aveiro is called the "Venice of Portugal," so we were pretty excited to see it.  The excitement died quickly.  I mean, it was neat and all, but we were glad we only had an hour or so there.

A cool thing about Aveiro is that many of their houses are painted in a certain theme, which is candy caned stripes.  This reminded me of the colorful houses we saw on Burano while in Venice.

Candy cane homes.  Lookin' tasty!

We also got to see the beach, but the weather was pretty crappy, so we didn't get to sunbathe or anything like that.  After a quick stop at the beach, we made our way to the city center to see the canals and grab breakfast.  Long story short, the canals are not very long and it seemed like a pretty big stretch to compare it to Venice.  Yea, they have candy cane houses and gondolas, but Venice they are not.  

Right by the beach mon, OYEEEE!

No, we don't want to ride the gondola.

Allison found a shop and bought a TON of baby clothes for Emerson, and I saw a cool looking church with the famous Portuguese tiles adorning the exterior.  And that was that for Aveiro.

Allison shops while Addison takes pictures
of old churches.

Coimbra was our next stop, which thankfully was a lot cooler than Aveiro.  Coimbra is home of the 7th oldest continually operating university in the world, founded in 1290.    After lunch we did a little shopping on the main strip before heading uphill.  We did a quick tour of the University of Coimbra while we waited for our reservation to visit their library.  Neat stuff.  There was a wedding being held, so the main square was packed and it was pretty cool to see.

Igreja de Santa Cruz.

Just a little shopping.

Skinny building we thought was cool.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the Biblioteca Joanina.  Pretty cool spot.  They let loose bats at night to eat the moths and prevent them from destroying the books.  On the bottom floor of the library, there are old cells that were for arresting rowdy students.  See tiny door below.  Allison for scale.

University of Coimbra.  

Allison was in jail for misbehaving.

After seeing the Library, we departed Coimbra and headed towards our final destination of Tomar.  We had originally planned to swing by Fatima on the way, but we decided against that since we were running low on time with our hired driver.

Restaurants

Restaurante A Cozina da Marina

We grabbed lunch at Restaurante A Cozina da Maria down the hill from the University.  Our driver recommended it and it did not disappoint.