Quarto & Pasta Guesthouse, Coimbra

This time I didn't have any big plans for Coimbra, as I had already been here twice, and I had seen almost everything except the Santa Clara a Nova monastery, so I booked a place in the Santa Clara area for two nights. The hotel on Rua António Augusto Gonçalves nº 27, was a small two-story house separated from the street by a fence with an unlocked gate, but the front door was closed. I contacted the owners in advance and we agreed on the check-in time, I had to wait at the door for only a couple of minutes, a woman came and sympathetically asked if I had to get wet here under the recent rain, opened the door.

In the house, I was asked to choose one of two vacant rooms on the lower floor, which were not particularly different from each other, with a large double bed and a small children's bed.

The room facing the street had a wardrobe and a Desk. Of particular interest was a rare carved chair covered with embossed leather.

However, I looked into the other room. The set of beds there was the same.

But the furniture was much more modest.

However, I decided to stay in it, as the view from the window was much more picturesque, but the main argument was the South side. Let me remind you that it was the end of November, besides, according to local residents, it was abnormally rainy and cold, so the sunlight and heat were not superfluous at all. There is no Central heating in Portuguese homes, it was quite cool at night, but the electric heater provided the necessary comfort in the evenings, and at night it was even hot under a duvet.

At the end of the corridor, I found a large kitchen equipped with everything I needed, and I learned from the hostess that the nearest ALDI supermarket is a 5-minute walk away (41 Avenida Guarda Inglesa). The bathroom was shared, but this did not bother me at all, especially since I lived on the floor almost alone. Only one evening did a family stop by, but they left early in the morning, I didn't even have time to have a few words with them, and just before I left, a young man from Belgium, just like me, a solo traveler, settled in, and we quickly found a common language.

The kitchen window offers views of the ruins of the monastery of Santa Clara a Vella.

With the exception of the modern kitchen, the house is completely authentic, including wooden window frames with antique mechanism.

There are notes of gratitude to the owners from the residents in the corridor, and I always leave such notes if I leave in the absence of the owners and can't thank them in person.

There was also a small, smiling snowman hanging there. Although it was more than a month away from Christmas, the trappings of this holiday could be seen everywhere in Portugal.

Instead of the two planned days, I stayed in this cozy and very inexpensive place for five, visiting some of the surrounding attractions of Coimbra: Conímbriga, Penela, went to Pombal, and in the evenings went out for night photography in the historical center, which was a 10-minute walk across the Santa Clara bridge. The only problem I encountered was Internet access. In the corridor, opposite my door, there was a Wi-Fi router under a high ceiling, but the connection was lost several times during my stay.

After the first connection loss, I did not call the hostess, but tried to solve the problem on my own, simply restarting the router. The difficulty was that it was located at a height of more than three meters, and even with my 183 cm it was impossible to get it from the table, I had to pull out the bedside table from the next room. Climbing on it, I pulled the power supply of the router out of the socket, then plugged it back in, after which the Internet appeared.