I spent a beautiful day in Porto on Saturday. The weather was t-shirt gorgeous. I had wanted to visit Porto since a colleague at the Guggenheim had become Director of the Contemporary Art museum there (she has since moved on) and she described the part of town she was eyeing to live in – it Continue reading

Today I went to the mall. Yup. Walking is walking, there doesn’t always have to be a cathedral at the end of it, I think. It’s about 2 miles out of Coimbra in Santa Clara, and it’s a gorgeous Riverside walk to get there (except for the scary highway I had to cross), so I Continue reading

I’m really behind on this blog. So this post will be mostly pictures – so I can catch up – of this amazing place went to outside of Coimbra. Conímbriga is a one of the largest Roman settlements excavated in Portugal, only about 15 minutes outside of Coimbra city center. The floors of some of Continue reading

Saturday we thought we had tickets to see the Joanina Library so we climbed up the hill to the University. We were on time, but didn’t go to the right meeting point because it turned out that we actually had tickets to a much more extensive guided tour of all the original palace buildings. While Continue reading

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 Continue reading

Ok, I saw some capes. I’m good. This morning I took a fantastic, although ultimately unsuccessful, excursion to what I thought was a gluten-free bakery out in a residential area on the “new “side of town. It was definitely not a bakery, and they didn’t have any gluten-free products, except for ice cream (which was Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

Marco from the shuttle bus called me right as I got through passport control, and met me outside for the 90 minute drive. Such a pleasant drive, I was pretty sleepy and napped a bit as I looked out the window. Not much to see on the highway, but I realized as we passed signs Continue reading