If this is Thursday, it must be Porto!

Sorry to steal a title but my brain is pickled.  Thursday morning we were trying to get a ticket for the car so that we could get out of the parking lot. Thanks to a very helpful lady we managed to get the gate open but only after she walked us to where the security guard was.  No easy task, we were at the Mercado in the underground lot to the right of the stairs. She took us there without being able to speak English, only knowing we didn’t know what we were doing.  The security guard chastised me for not speaking Portuguese but I made him laugh when I shared all of my Portuguese vocabulary: vinho branco secco, vinho tinto,  bacalhoa, carnes, batata frito, and Obrigada. He gave us directions in sign language and Portuguese for what to do at the gate. Back up stairs we went. Dennis went to the car and I stayed by the gate to put the paper in the slot. All of a sudden, there he was, our hero taking the paper from my hand and signaling me to get in the car.  Now you know why we love Portugal. Really Blanche DuBois would do just fine here.

We can make this work!

How did we start with 12 and end with 14–no more shopping!

On Tuesday and Wednesday we were in Coimbra which is a beautiful medieval town with one of the oldest universities in the world. Most of these universities are in Europe but there is also one in Egypt. Coimbra’s university is a UNESCO World Heritage site, along with Salamanca which I was privileged to visit on a teaching trip. Maybe that should be our next adventure—visiting all of the world’s oldest universities.  But for now we visited the university and were awed by everything we saw. It is beautiful.  There are some newer structures built by Salazar that are rather ugly but that’s not what we trudged up hill to see.  We came to see the chapel and the library.

The Elevator 

From the elevator to the funicular to get to the campus.

Climbing the last hill to the University

University Courtyard

The Chapel

The Library

The Scholars

Coimbra is a lovely city with more than 100,000 people and it is a place where we could spend a much longer time. The people are lovely and you will find most everything you want, right here. Shopping in the pedestrian mall is very appealing.

The World According to Dennis:

Let me just take just a few minutes to share my impressions of beautiful Coimbra.  The old university campus is arranged around a courtyard with a tall tower in one corner. I wanted to climb but unfortunately it was open only to academics, not even visiting scholars like me.  I love those old towers before we got all safety conscious. They give me a funny feeling when I lean out over the edge and look down, something between elation and anxiety—you know where.  Do women get that too?

Anyway after about an hour or so, Jim, Pat, Cindy, and I headed down the hill for a “nip-o-the grape.”  On the way down, I thought I’d add a little humor to our conversation, and said, “Cindy, I think if someone came in here and leveled all the old buildings and put in a golf course, this area could really take off and make some money.”  She slowly turned and looked at me like I just dropped a turd in the punch bowl. Can you picture the eye roll and hear the deep sigh?  I waste some of my best humor on Cindy. 

She got back at me though as we continued to walk we passed many quaint shops, so naturally we had to shop. Need I add that most guys I know do not like shopping, especially me. Where does she decide to enter? A store that sells—wait for it—socks! An entire store that contains nothing but socks.  Many colors, sizes, textures, and patterns but only socks. Then she starts up and down each aisle examining each pair on each rack, feeling them, thinking about the color and then moving on. After about 30 minutes we leave the store and she has a banded pack of  6 pairs of socks for €6.   She’s smiling. I’m thinking, I park in the Walmart lot, walk in, buy a pack of 12 pairs of black socks and I’m outta there in 6 minutes.  Who shops for socks? Who does that? As I said before...just sayin’.