On Wednesday, we got up relatively early and had breakfast at our hotel, wishing safe travels to our British friends who were there too. We got in the car, and I proceeded to get us quite lost trying to get to the highway. (I would say incredibly lost, but I will save that for later in the day.) We began driving to Coimbra, Portugal's university town, but when we saw signs for the Bucacao Forest, we decided to take a small detour. (We remembered seeing the site in 1000 Places to See Before You Die.) We drove up into the lovely forest and explored the grounds of the palace hotel. It was hard to believe the lovely castle had paying guests now, instead of royalty.

We got back on the road to Coimbra, and after a few more wrong turns, landed in the center of town. By then I was a bit distressed - I have been our generally good navigator all trip long, and the day was going pretty poorly for us, direction wise. Little did I know what was to come.
Matt calmed me down by taking me for some of Coimbras famous pastries, which were good, but no pastel de nata. We then began walking around town, visiting churches, the shopping streets - including one called the ´Street of Broken Ribs´beause it was so steep, and the university itself. The old university was on top of a very large hill. We took an elevator, then a funicular to get there. The university square was designed by fascists, and you could tell. It was very imperial looking, and stark.

We got some late lunch-early dinner, and hopped on the road at about five pm for the 1.5 hour drive to Nazare, the beach town where we planned to spend the remainder of our trip. We found the A1 easily. TOO easily. Within minutes we were commenting to each other: Huh, I thought the A1 would be bigger than this. I thought it would have a toll. I didn't think it would have donkeys. And then we were lost, terribly lost. We wandered from tiny city to tiny city, discovering an hour later that the A17 (which we were aiming to get to) did not exist yet, despite being on our map. We found ourselves on a country road we thought would be perfect... until it spontaneously ended. At that point, Matt switched seats and gave me my first manual driving lesson. I did okay until it got to starting on a hill. So we switched back, and we saw a couple of cars. We thought, we should follow them. They must be going somewher - maybe to a city or at least to a road with a name. We followed them, followed them... right into their driveway at the end of a dead end dirt road on top of a hill. Oops. Matt executed a lovely seventeen point turn to get us out of their driveway, as they all stared but said nothing. After another hour of driving, we wound up back in Coimbra, where we began the trip to Nazare again. The second time around, the drive was relatively uneventful. We arrived at our beautiful beach front hotel, discovered we had been given the best room in the place (with a balcony facing the beach), and grabbed some dinner and drinks. We discovered that this is where all the people are - there wer e thousands just walking the streets, drinking, laughing and dancing. We joined them, and then fell into a sound sleep late that night.