Traveling through Portugal was a breeze, with the exception of getting from Coimbra to Conimbriga (which did not turn out too difficult but it was not the most obvious to us). Because we searched and failed to find useful references on how to get from downtown Coimbra to Conimbriga, I decided to document that here.
Conimbriga is the site of ancient Roman ruins that would make for a great half day trip from Coimbra. You can do a full day and tackle one of their long trails there but we did not have enough time. We took the earliest bus in the morning, spent a few hours wandering through the ruins and their small on-site museum, and returned on the early afternoon bus. Bus Service & Times
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While walking from the Castle of Leiria to Sé de Leiria (Leiria Cathedral), we came across the most adorable cafe! This was unexpected as it was not on any tourist map that we had but was the most welcome surprise as it allowed us to continue our 2-a-day caffeine addiction (sometimes 3-a-day for Andrew).
The price was in line with what you would expect anywhere else in Portugal for um cafe expresso or um pingo (< 1 euro). To learn how to order coffee in Portugal, I had to... google it...ha... but found this handy website (http://www.portugaltraveltips.co.uk/food-and-drink/how-to-order-coffee-in-portugal/) describing the types of coffee one could order. Coming from the states, I was used to a simple black coffee (no milk or sugar) but this is not really an option in the rest of the world (we had similar lack of black coffee in Australia).
The seating consisted of a mix of short stools and benches! We saw a young teen couple sitting here and I had to refrain from taking a creeper photo of them.
I'm excited to announce that Amateur Traveler is now on Bloglovin'! I've only started using Bloglovin' recently and fell into a deep deep relationship with the diversity of blogs and interests groups on the site. Why didn't I find this sooner?!
While on the train to Sintra from downtown Lisbon, I wrote up some snippets on the fabulous days of food we had, specifically the decadent pasteis de nata. It was so good, I decided to do a review of the best egg tarts we found in Lisbon. I only have 3 listed here but trust me, we went to bakeries every day...
Pastelaria Orion
Since coming back, everyone has asked, "How did you possibly spend 3 interesting weeks in Portugal? Isn't the country small?!" Why yes, the country is small in comparison to the other European countries but there are a ton of cities and towns to see! I mean, I've lived in Manhattan for almost 2 YEARS now and I still don't think I've seen it all. This is our general itinerary of our 3 weeks in Portugal, first flying into Lisbon, taking flights/buses/trains all over and finally ending up in Porto.
We thought this was an amazing and pretty thorough method to delve into the culture of Portugal, outside of its major cities and would suggest this route to any friends or fellow travelers looking to take their time exploring. We mainly stayed at Airbnbs, which I absolutely ADORE using whenever traveling.
I plan to have leg-specific posts for our different stops along the way. I could not possibly include it all into one post! I already did one on the hot springs in Sao Miguel just because that was fresh in my mind and I did not want to forget it.
Here are some of my favorite highlights from the trip (I literally have hundreds of photos to comb through) -- Our map with our route in sequential-ish order: |
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