First day in Coimbra in the middle of Portugal
We're not in Lisbon anymore. We caught a train last night to Coimbra, 126 miles north. The struggle is real.
I bought tickets online. They were legit. Went to check in; ticket agent couldn't find them . . . I had them saved as an image on my laptop; no wifi in terminal to send message; checked with international agent. Told us just to present them to the conductor on the train. He'd accept them.
They were for a 21:25 departure.
They were RENFE tickets (Spanish railway).
They were RENFE tickets (Spanish railway).
There -was- a RENFE train in the terminal, on line 3; it was listed on the Departures board as destined for Madrid. We weren't going to Madrid. There was a CP train scheduled for Coimbra at 21:30 on line 2.
We were headed for Coimbra so we got on the CP train.
A hundred empty seats; we took two. A hundred people got on . . . we were in somebody's seat. So we moved to the Bar Car to wait for the Conductor.
He refused to acknowledge we were getting off in Coimbra; he figured we were trying to stowaway for Madrid. He let us know we'd settle this "mañana." We had a passenger translate how we'd gotten mixed up and mounted his train. He came back with his own hand-picked passenger to translate. The showed our laptop photo again and recited our tale of woe again. He reiterated "mañana."
So we sat in the bar car for a three-hour local train instead of a two-hour express.
But we wound up in Coimbra. Just an hour later than we'd expected.
We hefted our bags and walked, dragged, and rolled our little caravan to the deserted taxi stand at 00:30 at night. And a taxi pulled up. Kathryn had written out our destination address; the driver looked at it and said, "OK."
We saddled up, and 8.70 euros later we were where we were scheduled for this week. I had the man keep the change for the 10 euro note. He joked with us that he didn't speak Portuguese; he only spoke Brazilian.
At 01:00 in the morning; we are exhausted; we are "home" in Coimbra.
The video is from our room window the next morning. Coimbra is a Portuguese mountain-top town. Well, actually the old town is centered on the flat beside the Mondego River.
Life is good.
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