Coimbra travel tips and highlights: Sun‑Baked Slopes, Student Serenades, Creative Sparks & Cats

Portugal Travelogue Part 5: Sun soaked Coimbra travel tips and highlights

It’s always mildly stressful and surprisingly tiring travelling from one place to another, especially when your luggage seems to get heavier by the hour. Made worse by a wheel on the big case breaking in a pavement air-vent.

Nothing says slow travel like dragging 15 kilos of dead weight through a station, suppressing all the swears.

The lesson here: Just take 2 cabin bags instead. It is possible to travel slowly with less luggage (as long as the accommodation has a washing machine).

But we made it. Right carriage, right seats, right train.

Portuguese trains are huge. Wide gauge, square carriages, and panoramic views of a countryside dotted with tiny, crumbling houses.

Our guide from the Jeep Safari in Porto had explained that when someone dies, their property is split between the entire family. If even one person refuses to sell or can’t be located, the building becomes stuck in limbo. Add a national shortage of builders and you get a landscape of crumbling shells and slow‑decaying charm.

It gives an impression of a place in decline, but the liveliness of Portugal belies that assumption.

🎓 Coimbra: A University Woven Into a City

Coimbra is a university town in the most literal sense. The campus is the town.

The first thing that struck me was the incredible intensity of the blue skies. I've never seen such vibrant skies, they almost look fake. This picture doesn't do it justice. Simply stunning.

Grand academic buildings tower over winding cobbled streets, parasols patchwork the side alleys, and the main drag is a mix of beautiful architecture and the usual tourist tat (the same cork magnets and naff tea towels we’ve seen everywhere).

But my Hen’s Tooth training kicks in: among the tacky tat, I sniffed out a couple of gorgeous, authentic essentials for the shop. Slow travel is good for sourcing, you see what’s truly local, not just what’s mass‑produced.

🏡 Our Apartment: A Slow‑Living Win

Our apartment was the nicest so far:

• a separate bedroom (luxury),
• two toilets (peak luxury),
• a washing machine (hallelujah. We have a full complement of pants)
• but no iron and no drying rack.

So I rigged a makeshift washing line across the balcony using a luggage strap. Slow living meets mild chaos.

The balcony overlooked terracotta rooftops… and eight air‑conditioning units blasting hot air at either end. There was a sweet spot in the middle where you could sit without being roasted alive. Great for drying washing, less so for relaxing evenings on the terrace.

Coimbra travel tips and highlights

🌱 Walking, Wandering & Botanical Bliss

Coimbra doesn’t have a huge list of must‑dos, but we found a self‑guided walking tour that took us through the old town and up to the botanical gardens.

The gardens were the one thing I really wanted to see. I'm a sucker for a garden.

(And that incredible sky. You can see the moon in this picture if you look close enough...)

The sensory garden was a delight: raised beds inviting you to touch, smell, and taste herbs. Scented geranium leaves that smelled exactly like Turkish delight, I need some for the allotment.

Ancient trees towered overhead, remnants of the terraced hillside from the 1600s. We foolishly ran out of water and were on the verge of melting, but the gardens were a highlight.

🎨 Creative Sparks Everywhere

Seeing simple motifs and handmade art around Coimbra lit something up in me. This trip, and Lithuania before it, is filling my head with colours, shapes, patterns. I want to:

• make more ceramics,
• fill sketchbooks with collages and doodles,

• play with colour palettes,
• create art just for fun.

And maybe, just maybe, some of it will become part of Hen’s Tooth.

Limited‑edition pieces, maybe?

But I’m reminding myself: the point is to create, not to commodify.

I'll be cracking open a fresh notebook when I get home. I have a wide range of them in the Notebooks Collection 

🍺 Beers, Meringues & Student Serenades

After climbing to the highest point in town (two cathedrals, both impressive), we wound back down to the waterfront and found a bar called Beers (should there be an apostrophe,  or was it started by someone called Beer?).

We skipped the heavy brews and went for cold Sagres and steak with chips. Refuel achieved.

Meringue seems to be a local specialty, so I grabbed a huge one to take back to the apartment. Priorities.

On our last day, we wandered through a contemporary art museum (underwhelming), bought a couple of lovely prints from a shop (much better), and stumbled upon a group of students in traditional dress playing strange guitars and a big drum in the street.

Coimbra’s student culture is everywhere.

Then we found a cat café. I’m never sure how I feel about them, but these were rescued street cats with ailments, now living their best lives. Two kittens tore around like tiny whirlwinds. We stayed longer than planned (because... cats!)

🌞 Slow Travel Takeaways from Coimbra

• Travel days are tiring. Pack light, pack smart
• University towns have a charm that is more atmospheric than action packed
• Botanical gardens are always worth it
• Creativity blooms when you slow down and take time to notice
• Cat cafe's are chaotic therapy