Coimbra

Partyyyyyyyyy Peeeeeeeeeeople - I just drank a second coffee and am in quite a caffeine shock. :D

Coimbra is a city in Portugal that has the oldest university and is particularly known for the sad style of Fado. The city, like Porto and Lisbon, is quite hilly and the campus and students are prominent throughout the city.

Looking back, I now realize that it probably wouldn't have been a bad idea if I had booked a free walking tour for this city. Since my schedule wasn't really clear and I didn't know how much I liked the city, I parked the car in an underground car park and just strolled off.

I accidentally walked into an exhibition not intended for tourists and then slowly made my way through the city and from attraction to attraction.

Found incredibly cool art!

I walked through the park and also through the university botanical garden.

Found the living organism of the tree from The Last Airbender! (Attention nerd info)

And I found myself in a Chinese bamboo forest that the botanical garden had planted here. Extremely impressive and an absolutely cool experience that I was able to have here.

What would a city tour be without an ice cream? - Exactly. It wasn't a worthwhile city tour, so I treated myself to an ice cream on "Backenbrecher-Gasse" and then fought my way up to the main university.

Summary of this trip: Pretty nice university.

Summary of the day tour: Old town with a beautiful university.

However, I have repeatedly asked myself what it would be like for the students if, in addition to the university, there were tourists constantly walking across the campus, getting lost in the university buildings, and using the cafeteria, and I came to the conclusion that I would rather an ugly university without tourists would have than a beautiful university with a bunch of tourists. Thanks to Ilmenau and Mannheim, this was also the case.

Overall, my impression of this city is: It's a pretty city, but I wouldn't go there again just to see it.

I had had enough of cities and people for the time being, so I decided to go hiking in the Serra da Estrela Natural Park.

I'll tell you more about my fantastic tours in this incredible landscape in my next posts.

Until then, I wish you all a great day and that you are very grateful for at least 1 experience today.

Your Britta