5-Day Trip to Seville & Coimbra – Part 4

Part 4 , part 3 can be found here.

Our Epic Journey from Seville To Coimbra

Friday Oct, 01: Seville To Coimbra

Up around 9:00 (it never stops !), and headed up toward where Alan & Claire were staying. We had our breakfast in a lovely café, sat outside and felt the heat of another hot day coming on. This was our last meal in Seville, and it was hard to leave. Still a magical place. The coffees alone are excellent. Alan & Claire came along shortly and joined us before setting off on the long journey to Coimbra.

Alan had already driven all the way from the Liverpool, got the ferry to Spain, and had driven all the way down to Seville after the San Sebastian gig. I’m sure he enjoyed the 38-hour break from the car. The most straightforward way to get from Coimbra from Seville, is to go west over into Portugal towards Faro, then head north all the way up to Coimbra. This would normally take around five hours. Alan had other ideas and wanted to go the scenic route. Well he was the driver, after all. We headed north up toward Badajoz, which is close to the border and onwards to Castelo Branca. From there it went a little pear shaped, the navigation went AWOL and the map we had was a bit outdated, basically we were lost.

Alan recounts it here “Thats were we couldnt find the ‘B’ road and ended up in Fundao where we drove round in circles twice. Before heading from Fundao through the highest mountain range in Portugal through to Calizes and on to Coimbra B station, which that bloody sat nav told us was Coimbra A!”

Alan is a scouser and when I read this, I think of him saying it in his strong Liverpool accent.

On the positive side, we ended up stopping in a few remote places en route and saw many Portuguese mountain ranges, which we would never have seen if we went the conventional motorway route. We also dipped our toes into a lovely river and found a kind of Portuguese Joshua tree.

One stretch of road we took had around 100+ hairpin bends—a tough drive—but lovely views as a passenger. Alan caught this video in the mountains here. We eventually got into Coimbra at around 21:00, almost 11 hours later. We parted company with Alan & Claire, who were meeting u2 fan Sandra from Porto and driving to their accommodations outside the city by the sea. We agreed to meet at 11:00 in the GA queue the following day. We all needed a bit of a rest.

As usual Joe and myself always stay city centre. The hotel was nice, and very central. We checked in, and took a walk around. It was surprisingly quiet for a night before a mass U2 fan invasion. It’s a small city, and easy to get around. The hotel reception had given us information on where the night life was. So we got something to eat first and headed up to the student area. At least here, there was a bit of life. Several pubs and cafés scattered around a lovely square. We then headed down to the river where there are a number of bars literally at the river, away from residential areas. There were some bands on playing music from the 1980s, which was an interesting change.

En route home, we heard loud music coming from somewhere and decided it had to be checked out. On the other side of the river to the bars we were in, there was a DJ playing in the open air. There was just a handful of people in the space around him, the area could hold a few thousand. We checked it out, and he played various dance music, including a remixed U2 track. The police arrived and shut him down. It was around 2:30 and time to head home for a reboot.

Pictures from today are here.

Part 5 - U2 Coimbra # 1 gig coming soon.

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