That will teach me to talk too soon. I’ve been waxing on about how austere and simple the church’s are in comparison to Spain and then we stumble across the Church of the Patron Saint of Coimbra, Saint Queen Isabel (that’s her up there in the silver casket behind the altar). There was gold gilt everywhere. The cloisters and church were nowhere as well preserved as they are in Spain, however the simplicity is absolutely appealing.
Slow start this morning with it being Sunday we opted to stay for breakfast at our accommodation rather than taking a packed breakfast. We headed out by about 9.00am and made our way through the hills towards Coimbra – University City. The walk was pleasant in that temperatures were great and although there were quite a few ups and ups again, we made it in good time.
The weekend is upon us so we had laundry to do. Locating the closest Lavadaria, we loaded up the machines and got the process underway with seemingly everyone in the laundry wanting to help us get the machines paid for and going! We are now VERY happy with clean clothes loaded back into the suitcases. However, the downside is that you should be able to smell the chemicals in the wash powder the machine automatically uses all the way back to Australia. In fact we didn’t need Google maps to find the laundry – we could smell the powder almost two blocks away!
So washing done, a wander around the city , a light dinner and back to our rooms and looking forward to a day off tomorrow!