Portugal – Part II
On Friday, 19 May, we left the Pousada de Queluz and travelled to Obidos. It was a pretty place, with a castle, ancient walls, and a Roman aqueduct.
Obidos Main Street
The town and the Roman wall.
We had a walk around, then headed for Coimbra, where they have a big university. We annoyed the students for a while, then went into the town where we visited a croissant café and wandered the narrow streets looking into shops.
The University.
The view.
The shops.
Random church.
Down by the river, where we waited for the bus, we sat in a shady, tree-lined walkway. There are a lot of these around, and they make a handy refuge from the heat.
A lovely, tree-lined street. Almost every town we visited had one of these.
From there, the bus meandered toward Viseu. We arrived in the late afternoon where, after eight hours of bus travel and sight-seeing, and with our next hotel literally in sight, TM* suggested we stop so we could get out and take photos.
There was almost a mutiny.
We did not stop.
* If you are just joining us, TM is what I am calling our Tour Manager.
..
The Pousada de Viseu
Our first hotel, the Pousada de Queluz, was compact, yet elegant, and oozed old-world charm. Conversely, the Pousada de Viseu attempts to impress with its size, which is not hard to do because it is massive. It started life as a hospital in the mid-1800s, closed in 1997 and re-opened in 2009 as a luxury hotel, with sleek, wooden panelling, generous rooms and ultra-modern fixtures that leave you puzzling over how to turn on a faucet. The result is a hotel that looks like a cross between a monastery and a Las Vegas conference centre.
The Pousada de Viseu
The conference room/bar/lounge/dining area.
Both, however, failed to attain true POSH status, as neither have adequate tea and coffee service available in the rooms. In the first hotel, there were none. In this hotel, they are there, but if we use them, the hotel will charge us €5 if we want more. This is free in the Premier Inn. Additionally, even though both hotels provided a bidet (I know what, just not why, or how—those things don’t really invite you to sit on them), neither have toilets with soft-close toilet lids.
€5 for extra tea! And they charged €3 for water!
They did have a lovely wine bar, however, and a Cigar Bar.
Sadly, neither were open for business.
Viseu Main Street.
Viseu side street.
We checked into our room, did a bit of exploring and, after returning to the hotel, retired to the big conference room/bar/lounge/dining area with our books to wait for dinner. We had gone down early to read but ended up in a cluster of our new travel companions.
The people on these trips are easy to like—we’re all roughly the same age and automatically have a lot in common—and because we enjoy travel, we have a multitude of airplane horror stories to share. Inevitably, though, cliques form and some couples keep to themselves, but that did not happen on this trip. This group was the most harmonious and companionable I have yet encountered, which was why my wife and I didn’t get much reading done.
It was grand to sit and chat with everyone, and since they didn’t know the details of my life, I could present my CV in a way that—even without hyperbole—made me sound fairly impressive. After all, I am a choir director (two choirs now, but that’s another story), a published author, a blogger (the longest running, continuously active, personal blog in the world, I’ll have you know), and an entertainer. And, of course, I have a great, “How I met my wife” story (and I never failed to mention that I wrote a book about it).
That’s pretty impressive, if you don’t look too closely, and it helped me keep up with the others, who entertained the group with stories of the many amazing things they had done. But then I wondered if maybe they were padding out their CVs just as I was.
At any rate, we had a lovely chat, a few glasses of wine, and agreed that the hotel, despite its ostentatious opulence, looked like any corporate conference centre anywhere in the world. We also agreed that, although it was obviously keen to impress, it failed the, “Guess how much?” test. This is where you go someplace POSH, buy a drink, then say to your friends, “Guess how much I paid for a glass of wine?” In the Pousada de Viseu, it was €7.00 a glass (or £6.00), which is cheaper than you’d pay in any standard chain restaurant in Britain. (Well, for those of us living in the South; for the Northerners, it was a bit of a shock.)
The next day we left early to visit a winery. The tour was interesting and informative and, at the end, we had a wine-tasting. Unfortunately, no one liked the wine. (It was too young, and therefore quite sharp.)
Lots and lots of wine…
…but no one liked it.
After that, we went to a small cheese maker. It was a strenuous walk to get to their little workshop, which was so small we couldn’t tour it. Instead, they had a professional-looking promo video that the woman showed and commented on. She possessed a thorough knowledge of her subject, was charming, entertaining, and had an excellent command of English, totally unlike TM.
Many of the people in our group, including me, were cheese aficionados, and were looking forward to this. We were thrilled by the presentation and taken by the woman presenting it but, alas, none of us liked the cheese.
Excellent presenter, cheesemaker, and contest winner.
(She also had a better, “How I met my spouse,” story than me: she won him in a contest. No, really. She went on a show called, Farmer Wants a Wife, and won. And they are still married and running the cheese business together.)
We then went back to Viseu where we went out to explore the town again and find someplace to eat. We didn’t find any.
It was Saturday but, strangely, the town was shut down as if it was Sunday. The only restaurant we could find was the obvious one in the town centre. We had wanted something more out-ot-the-way, but we had to settle for what was available. As it turned out, we had a very good meal, accidentally ordered a bottle of wine (the man asked what size drink I wanted, I made a hand sign for large, and he brought us a bottle; oh darn) and were allowed to sit on the terrace with our coffee even though, by then, the restaurant had closed for the afternoon.
After that, we toured the town some more, going further afield, and discovered where all the cafés and restaurants were.
The following morning, we left.
Next up: Colditz