Mercado do Bolhão

We returned to the hotel to pick up our luggage and then got a taxi to the train station. That is where our travel day problems began. You would think that we would be experts at this by now! Coimbra has 2 train stations....1 in the centre of town and 1 about 2 km north at the edge of town. Since our train wasn’t leaving for 2 hours, our plan was to go to the central station where I could go for a walk and John would stay at the station with the luggage. They have a free shuttle train that runs between the 2 stations. I specifically told the taxi driver we wanted to go to the central station but he thought he knew better or could make more money by taking us to the station on the outskirts of town. I didn’t realize it until after the taxi drove away. I wasn’t going to sit at the train station so I walked to the centre of town and returned 10 minutes before our departure time, as the walking distance took longer than expected. European trains are very efficient as they never depart early and are rarely late. My big problem was that I couldn’t find John anywhere. When a train pulled out of the station there he was on the other side of the tracks, blocked from my view by the train. I called him over as I believed our train would be departing from my side. Oops! Big mistake on my part as I didn’t translate the Portuguese departure sign correctly, nor did I understand the announcement in Portuguese. So we missed our train, had to pay a €8 fee to change our tickets, and had to wait another hour for the next train. This is one time where John was in the right place and I’m surprised he didn’t board the train without me!

Porto is 120 km north so the train ride was just over an hour. I managed to figure out the Porto metro system and we quickly arrived at the street where our apartment was located. We had some difficulty finding the apartment as I had written down all the directions except for the street number so I had to go into a restaurant to use their wifi. This is when a data plan on my phone would have come in handy. The plan I purchased didn’t work so I never renewed it. It wasn’t the smoothest transition but we arrived safely. Our new home is beautiful....the nicest apartment we’ve rented on this trip. Booking.com had a special daily deal so the one bedroom apartment is only costing us €65 a night.Læs mere