Minha Morada em Portugal

Maura and I had such a fun, event filled weekend that I am WAY BEHIND ON THIS BLOG. I need to do some catching up, so I will take it day by day.

Last Thursday, Maura got to the apartment about 2:30pm, just when I was starting work. She was incredibly jetlagged, and I had 7+ hours of work ahead, so it all worked out – She slept while I worked into the night and she, of course, woke up late then from the time change. I had a date starting at midnight with my wonderful online Sondheim Study Group for our monthly meeting – which was “Sondheim Jeopardy“ this month so I wasn’t going to miss it. That took a couple of fun hours so we both actually got to bed around 2 AM.

Coimbra sightseeing started Friday morning. I showed her the surrounding medieval area where we’re staying, and then we went down to the Town Market. We got into conversation with one of the vendors there, who makes organic gluten-free products, who is lovely and told us a little bit about how the market is still utilized in the city, but less so now that some of the big supermarket chains have come in. Then we walked around that area and into the Praça 8 de Maio to see the central church there, Igreja de Santa Cruz. Absolutely stunning. It’s in the main shopping square and when there are festivals and holidays in the city, the parties and revelry generally happen in front of this church.

Next-door to the church, actually attached to it because it was probably was part of a rectory at some point, is an old beautiful café, which has been operating since before the 20th century. The current renovation is from the 1920s. Great atmosphere, and a great place for me to go to do some work if I want to find a place to go midday. What was so fantastic was that there was no music – nothing playing in the background so you could really collect your thoughts. Maura commented how there aren’t any cafés like that in the US at all – there is always some kind of background sound being piped in. The place clearly has live music at times, fado and poetry readings, mainly. Really great space. (not much for me to eat there, but nice to have some tea). The waiters were all very old-school, and look like they’ve been there forever. The display on the bar was pretty impressive as well.

We walked around in the afternoon in the evening, checking out all the local sites I had found the week before. It was great to get to do the tourist thing now together, after a week of looking at supermarket labels solo. Maura noticed many things that I had completely missed- like this great view of this ancient street on a hill next to a pretty sliver of an old building, a little like the FlatIron in shape. I had completely missed this beautiful spot.

Earlier, in the day, I had posted a question on the Coimbra Expats Facebook group asking where we could go to see great, non-touristy Fado that night. We immediately got responses that the gold standard in town was at Diligencia, which was the place my brother and sister-in-law had remembered from 20+ years ago and suggested as well. One of the Facebook group members mentioned that a group of expats/friends from the FB group were meeting at Diligencía at 8:30 and invited us to join. So, after a great dinner at Sete Restaurant, which I had seen on the Find Me GF website (and ended up being right next to Igrehja de Santa Cruz), we went to find the Fado.

It was great to meet up with this group and talk with them about how they made their decisions to move to Portugal, and specifically why they had landed on Coimbra. Everyone talked about community as being their number one priority, and what Coimbra really had to offer. The phrase that was mentioned more than once, and that I had seen on that Facebook group a few times, is “You do not choose Coimbra, Coimbra chooses its people.” I absolutely love this – and everyone there was very adamant about it being true. They all talked about the difficulties of studying Portuguese, as it continues to prove to be an intense and challenging language for them — but described the many resources and classes available in the area to connect with regardless of level of knowledge. It was a great group, and they gave us lots of info, including where I might be able to get a haircut 🙂

The Fado itself was quite a scene. Three musicians started to play at 9 PM, and played only one song, before somebody who had initially looked like just a patron got up, and just took over, singing all the songs, very slowly, and deliberately. He was kissing everyone on their heads, and playing with the guitarist’s hair, and seemed to be quite drunk. After a couple of songs, we asked our new friends if this was planned, or if this guy had just crashed the whole show. They confirmed that he had just crashed it, but was an old timer at the bar, and the guitarists were showing him respect by slowing down their accompaniment and letting him perform. We heard later that this guy actually had been a former owner of the bar (but not sure of that). He was clearly holding court and addressed our group in the back a few times in English – but we didn’t really catch it. Many people in the bar knew the songs that he was singing and sang along with him. And at one point, a woman picked up one of the guitars and played the accompaniment along with the other two men. We heard that this is unusual as women do not play fado in Coimbra. The style of music itself was much happier/bouncier than the fado I remember from Lisbon (sung by a lovelorn sounding woman). this kind of fado is clearly everyone having a good time.

Every moment we were there felt like it was genuine and – cinematic. I loved it. It was a really great evening.