Our day from Coimbra began relatively smoothly. Leaving urban areas on bicycles is always a pain - especially when you don't know the urban area. Truth is, even at home, I'll load my road bike onto the car rack and drive to Ardrossan to go for a ride before heading out through the city - 97th Street is best left to vehicles and there are so many places where shared use lanes shift to sidewalks or disappear altogether...It's really no different in Portugal. Lisbon was lovely when we could follow a bike path; as soon as the bike path ended and we had to share the road with traffic the stress multiplies exponentially. We knew from our experience in the spring that Coimbra could be no different. Our hotel in May was closer to the center of the city and we'd experienced the traffic of Coimbra then. During our rest day the university had hosted a club day through the center of the city. Tables were set up through several blocks where the various university clubs were selling themselves not only to the students, but to anyone interested enough to stop and ask. You'd think with an event like this some planning would go into the impact on traffic. One of the roads up to the university was blocked off. Another was blocked by a bus that had decided a u-turn at an intersection would be a good idea. ALL of the traffic between the bus and the closed street was at a standoff. Police were no where to be seen; well, they were their to enforced the closed road - apparently they weren't there to direct traffic. As pedestrians it was actually pretty entertaining, albeit loud, to watch the frustrated drivers honking horns in hope that someone at the front of the line would get a message to move somewhere. Problem was there was absolutely nowhere to move. The traffic was stopped. Buses were emptying of passengers who were figuring out that they could walk home more quickly. The students, enjoying their club day, were oblivious to the traffic disaster playing out around them. Someone had missed the bus in the planning of the event, or permitting of the event. Either way, my point is that rush hour in Coimbra can be a source of entertainment, or hell, depending on your perspective. On a bike, in the midst of rush hour, it's more hell than entertainment.
We were "lucky" this trip. Our hotel was on the edge of the city and the bike lanes actually made sense - at least when you looked at them (hint, don't rely on watching GPS to know exactly where you are going - small screens distort intersections and the configuration of intersections is often next to impossible to understand - We've made no end of wrong turns following the screens of our Garmins). Leaving the hotel we were quickly on our route to our next destination. And, for the first 1/2 of the day - about 20 kilometers or so - we followed smaller roads through forested hills. The hills were gentle and the forests were lovely to ride through. There was little traffic, and what cars were around passed us with plenty of room.
I'm not sure where the idyllic nature of the trip changed but somewhere towards the middle of the ride our route moved onto the highway running north. Unlike Northern Spain where the freeways are open to all; the freeways in Portugal are toll roads. Most Portuguese avoid them, and the charges. In Northern Spain it leaves the service highways empty - and delightful roads to follow from town to town. Not so much in Portugal. We had relatively small shoulders and constant traffic - fast, small cars, slow moving transport trucks that always seem a little closer as they go by. It was a stressful ride. As we got closer to Agueda, our destination, the highway became restricted to motor vehicles only and we were directed onto a slightly less busy secondary highway. It was an improvement and helped by the fact that the road was mostly downhill. Yet, the stress wasn't completely gone. Businesses and industries along the way were active. Cars and trucks turning into them, or out of them, in front of us. We learn to manage, but drivers do have a habit of pulling as far forward as they feel safe doing when turning out of a driveway - on a bicycle we're forced into the traffic lane to go around the front of their car; and I'm not always convinced they've registered our presence until we're right in front of their grill. But, we made it.
Agueda at first didn't make a great impression. First look was impressive. We crossed a small bridge and passed what looked to be a lovely downtown. Our directions (from the somewhat suspect Garmins) were to go straight from the bridge. Straight up a fairly steep hill. I remembered looking at the satelite images as I laid out the routes we were following. At the top of the hill we needed to turn through the towns administrative square (I think that's what it was). Closed to cars the Garmins were giving us all sort of directions - turn left, then right on XYZ street. Street signs are not always obvious in Portugal - sometimes they are not just there, and sometimes the street changes names two or three times as it goes through a town....I digress...we didn't get lost...we got confused. All the more so when the Garmin led us back to the top of the hill. A sign pointed to our hotel, and we followed the sign down. There, at the bottom of the hill, above a couple of sets of stairs and a retaining wall, was our hotel. Sandy went in to register while I waited outside. She returned and we were to take our bikes into the underground parking where they would be secure for the night. This was complicated by the fact that the garage door closed after we entered, and then the lights in the garage began to shut off every 30 seconds or so while we locked and unloaded our bikes. Sandy found a light switch that would bring the lights back on while I rushed to unload our panniers, take off the electronics and lock the bikes. After about four rounds of the lights coming on and switching off the task was accomplished. Only then did we need to figure out where the elevator to the lobby might be. A couple more times of falling into darkness and we escaped the garage.
The young woman at the desk was delightful, and delighted that we had come from Coimbra where she is studying for a Masters degree in "Social Education" We took some interest in her studies - acknowledging that Sandy's daughter, Janet, has her masters degree in Educational Psychology. That opened the door to a floodgate of information about her studies - most of it centered on the role that "Social Education" plays in the creation of mass murderers in the United States. I suspect the woman may have recently watched a series on Jeffrey Dalmer on Netflix...but it took awhile to get up to our room. I left the conversation wondering about the exact nature of her studies; suspecting that it might be more oriented to Sociology and Criminology than Education. In any case, I think we made a friend.
Once cleaned up we wandered out to take a look at the town. We quickly discovered that had we taken a left from the bridge rather than climbing the hill we would have arrived at the hotel much more quickly than we did. Agueda has, for about ten years, undertaken to cover the pedestrian streets of down town with umbrellas. They are delightful - colourful shade in the sun and the heat. The pedestrian streets, in addition to shops catering to basic needs have cafes, ice cream shops and sovenir shops along the way. Unlike many other "touristy" places it was a tasteful and pleasant place to spend some time. We stopped for a beer, a Gin and Tonic and shared a board of mixed cheeses and sausages for a mid afternoon snack.
A siesta followed a little more walking around town and then wandering up the hill for dinner we stopped at a bar with an outdoor Patio. I had a hamburger and Sandy tuna salad and vegetable soup. We shared the fries that came along with both of our choices. Another day was done, and we were a day closer to Santiago.
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