Minha Morada em Portugal

I’m spending a lot of time in supermarkets. Today was very rainy, so I only went out once for a walk to the other big supermarket in town. I definitely learn more Portuguese from standing in the supermarket reading labels than I do from videos or apps. I still can’t speak anything other than Good Day and Thank You, but I can infer what all the words are from the labels, so now I know some food words. Don’t know how to pronounce them, but I can identify them. That’s progress.

And I had success with making my way around a 1-2 mile radius today. I was not reliant on Siri for almost all of my walk, which is an improvement. I even went out to find the merengue place and triumphantly came home with one without even looking at a map. So I’m getting more comfortable.

If you walk straight down many many flights of stone stairs right outside my apartment (not Death Traps but still slick and mildly dangerous) you get to Arco de Almedina and the surrounding plaza that has many of the more touristy Fado establishments. Every day at 18:00 there is a Fado concert that you can sign up for earlier in the day. It’s kind of like how there was a Chopin concert every evening when we were in Warsaw, and how there’s a Puccini concert every evening in Lucca, Italy. This is only for tourists, so I’m not sure where the “real” Fado is, yet. Eventually, I will go to one of these concerts, but I’ll wait until guests are staying with me before doing that. Because, you know, I’m a digital nomad, not a tourist. At least for this month.

I haven’t looked into any of the exhibitions, yet, but I have come across a few signs there are a few signs highlighting the former communities of Jews in Coimbra. One exhibition takes place in a room where the tribunal of the Inquisition operated, and another seems to be a former Mikvah. Neither were open this weekend – it looks like most museum spaces are not open on Mondays, and I found the Inquisition space on Saturday which would be closed for observance. I remember there were a number of places in Lisbon commemorating the former Jewish communities there, which, of course, were extensive, until they weren’t. This was certainly the case in Spain as well (Dora could speak about that in depth, having spent her semester abroad there.) I will check out these spaces later in the month and report back.

Look, more Bacalhau… I assume I will find a way to try this dish eventually.

Following up on Sari‘s question, I found this bike share rack on my way to the supermarket – so there are bikes here, but not in the area where the apartment is, which would just be impossible with the hills and stones. The old town area is really only accessible by foot.

I really didn’t go out too long today, just a couple of hours, most of which was spent staring at labels in the supermarket. When I got home, someone was fixing the roof, and my landlord had left me a lovely bottle of wine and a box of chocolate to apologize for the leak yesterday. That’s so sweet, he’s a lovely guy. I’m looking forward to sharing these with my houseguests. (And if I eat and drink them all before houseguests arrive, we will just have to buy more!)