Minha Morada em Portugal

Argh! I was right – and I am so disappointed! It IS Winter Break and these Harry Potter capes aren’t coming back until literally the weekend after I leave! There are clearly students around here, but not a cape in sight! Maybe when we tour the Harry Potter-esque Library on Saturday, there will be some cape-wearing tour guides. Ah well.

Today I started my work life as a digital nomad. It was admittedly kind of weird. Nobody started emailing me until 3 PM my time, and it got dark about two hours later, and then there was still hours of work left! I finished at about 10 PM. In terms of “face time” it’s no different than being at home in Queens, but it is hard to wrap your head around what everyone is actually doing at the office because of the timing. I’m sure it will be easier soon, I just need to get used to it.

Before work started, I took a nice 2 hour walk in the morning. The sun was out, it was about 65° and there was a pretty balmy wind. My sweater was too heavy for this morning! I went across the bridge on the Mondego River to the other side of Coimbra in the Santa Clara neighborhood. There is a huge monastery there, which is the main attraction. I didn’t go in – I really just walked around today, knowing that I wouldn’t go out later in the day. Very different vibe on the other side of the river, no medieval structures, as I think everything is post-1700 over there.

Ok, wow. So, as I approached this next structure, I first thought “who are those dudes in front of that White Castle?” and then as I got closer, it looked more and more like the The Gingerbread Castle in New Jersey that my parents took me to in 1976 – and which is now an overgrown, freaky Weird NJ site out in the woods. (Did any friends here in the Metro NYC area ever visit that storybook park as a child? I have very vivid memories of it, and my mom even had pictures of her family visiting it in the 50’s.)

This Coimbra structure also seems to be an active story park about the history of Portugal and its colonies. According to Wikipedia it was built in the 1940’s. (The Gingerbread Castle, with its similar look and style, opened in 1930.) This place is so weird – it is just sitting out on a main road. There was a fee to go in and I didn’t want to do that today, but I peeked inside the gate. I didn’t get a great look – but basically the statues and exhibits on display representing the colonies are difficult to look at because of pretty racist imagery. I’m really curious to get more information about the history of this structure and why it is still there – and how people respond to it both locally and generally. I guess I will learn more the next time I cross over to that side of the bridge to see the Santa Clara monastery.

(Note: I am officially turning on the “no stairs“ preference on my Google maps. First of all, this place is crazy, so many stairs and the stairs are just so crazy – and second of all Google maps is really into them. There are ways of doing this without stairs so we will make that a priority from now on.)

On the way back, I checked out the area around my apartment a little more thoroughly, since Google wasn’t forcing me to take the stairs out of the Plaça again –

On the administrative side these are the highlights: 1) my work FedEx did not show up again, so there is a monitor and keyboard floating around a warehouse in Porto somewhere. I can get by for a couple of days with just the laptop, but it’s such a small screen that I am squinting! 2) I made a coffee date with a woman who responded to me on the Coimbra ExPats FB group where I quietly watch what everyone is posting and don’t make a peep and 3) I called to see an apartment. I didn’t fall in love with the pictures, but it is a good affordable start. So, it’s worth a look.

It’s been a long day, it’s almost 11pm, and I have to do it all again tomorrow.

Boa Noite a todos❤️