With travelling for four months, I’ve now realized that our trip isn’t only a vacation, it also has to become a lifestyle. It’s just not sustainable to sightsee everyday for nine hours and eat out every meal… and we still have real life responsibilities to attend to.
In that spirit, this morning we spent an hour or so in a lovely Coimbra café, Nau Coffee, working on job applications and school documents. To power us, I had a cappuccino, Liam a chai latte, and we had a late pastel de nata between us.
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| A nice working set up |
After our morning working session, we spent the afternoon exploring the city some more. We first visited some Coimbra University buildings. This university is the oldest in Portugal and has beautiful grounds spread throughout the city.
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| One of the oldest university buildings |
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| In the university square |
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| Walking down the campus stairs |
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| The Coimbra University Faculty of Medicine |
When exploring, we came across a beautiful house just outside the university gardens. We paid 3 euro to visit, and ended up with a private guided tour through the house. It turns out the house belonged to Fernando Bissaya Barreto, a very influential 20th century Portuguese doctor. He lived alone and spent most his time travelling, teaching medicine, and conducting surgeries.
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| Bissaya Barreto house |
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| Grandma & grandson statue in his house |
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| Collection of the doctor’s old books from the 1500s |
His doctoral dissertation was written “On the sun”. A 1000 page summation of his research on how the sun can be influential in healing diseases, a groundbreaking and controversial topic at the time.
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| The doctoral dissertation! |
In the evening, we walked some more through the city, over the beautiful Pedro e Ines footbridge and through decorated alleyways.
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| Pedro e Ines footbridge |
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| Views from the footbridge |
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| Fun hat decorations over the alley |
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| Part of the old castle wall |
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