{"id":322,"date":"2022-06-15T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/?p=322"},"modified":"2022-07-13T00:40:06","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T00:40:06","slug":"braga-day-1-july-15-history-and-expat-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/2022\/06\/15\/braga-day-1-july-15-history-and-expat-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Braga Day 1 (July 15) History and Expat Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our Apartment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After arriving in the dark last night, we discovered that our location in Braga, Pra\u00e7a Velha, wasn\u2019t just kind of close to historic things, but it was just inside the Arco da Porta Nova, a landmark location on the medieval city wall, marking an entrance into the historic district of Braga. On the square inside the gate, there were several restaurants, with apartments above. Outside the gate was a main street that seemed to circle around the old city beside the wall. There were several small shops and a bus stop , including an excellent pastelaria called Tibias de Braga. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This time our 3rd<\/sup> floor apartment was a bit dark (2nd<\/sup> floor in European-speak), buried in a sea of buildings with windows that looked onto other walls. There was a tiny balcony where you could check the outside air, but it it was an enclosed space of roofs and crumbling gutters. There was a \u201cdeck\u201d below for an apartment below us, but no one used it that we saw. There was a clothesline outside one of our windows, but I wouldn\u2019t dare use that because if I dropped something, how would I get it back! There were dropped clothespins on the roof below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a large living room and kitchen with a dining table dividing them. The d\u00e9cor was more industrial that the shiny new apartments in Lisbon and Porto, and grayer than the bright airy pictures on booking.com. The roomy bathroom was smooth gray concrete. Maybe with the damp winters we\u2019ve heard about, that\u2019s more practical than peeling paint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also inconvenient that there were only two coffee pods for the coffee machine, which required some particular brand of pods. We got some instant coffee at the grocery and relied on the nearby Tibias pastelaria for more breakfast snacks, after Pam ate granola in the apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minho Free Walking Tour<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We thought a walking tour would be a good way to discover the city. We found Minho Free Walking Tours, which promised an historical intro to the city. The tour is really free, but the guide passes the hat for a pay-what-you-want, which is a popular method. They also had tours of Guimar\u00e3es and Bom Jesus do Monte by reservation only. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We met our guide with her green umbrella and three other history-seekers right outside Arco da Ponta Nova. (Our apartment was in a useful location!) She pointed out some features in Pra\u00e7a Velha \u2013 the one original medieval-era building, and one of the calv\u00e1rios, dioramas in the walls of various buildings throughout the city center displaying a scene from Jesus\u2019 final days. The doors of the calv\u00e1rios are opened during Semana Santa (Holy Week).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then she led us down the narrowest lane in the city, barely wide enough for her umbrella. It was beside the medieval wall and the buildings there were built right against that wall. We walked along the street toward the S\u00e9 de Braga, the city cathedral. In the block in front of the cathedral, we stopped in a guitar store and learned about cavaquinhos as the ancestor of the Hawaiian ukulele, as well as the Portuguese guitar. (Later, one of our fellow tour members went back to buy his own cavaquinho. We saw the couple again when we went to Bom Jesus do Monte.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A curiosity about the Braga Cathedral is a statue on the outside rear wall, Our Lady of the Milk, the Virgin breast-feeding Jesus. Even more curious is a plaque nearby acknowledging that the cathedral was built on a Roman temple to the goddess Isis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We continued to the Pra\u00e7a do Municipio where a Library and Municipal building face off. The guide described how the Library was fancier and on higher ground, establishing its importance. Formerly belonging to the university, it is now public. Its major collection of antique books is of interest to researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On our way to the Jardim de Santa Barbara, our guide pointed out some businesses that had glass floors inside their entrance. The glass lets people see the Roman ruins revealed during building or renovations. We ended the tour at the Pra\u00e7a da Republica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lunch and New Friends<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the tour, we wandered on the Avenida da Liberdade, the major cross street with the Pra\u00e7a da Republica, looking for a promising lunch spot. We settled on Brasiliera, which turned out well, even though it was probably an obvious tourist option. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After lunch, David checked his phone and found that a Facebook group that he joined, Braga+ Expats, was having a ladies\u2019 meeting at a caf\u00e9 on the other side of the Pra\u00e7a. We headed over to say hello and were warmly welcomed and David was allowed to stay \uf04a. We spent a couple of hours chatting about people\u2019s experiences. The woman I sat next to had just arrived the week before. In the group were the admin Cindy, Anna, Joanna, Rosanne, Susan, and more. It was nice to meet Cathy, another musician who plays flute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward, we walked to a recommended neighborhood in Pra\u00e7a Mouzinho de Albequerque. One of the women lived there. We didn\u2019t imagine that there would be an available apartment overlooking the lovely green space though. We walked up a hill to the Capela de Guadalupe and saw the dramatic tower of the Monumento ao Sagrado Cora\u00e7\u00e3o de Jesus further up. We walked down beside the brown hillside of the Monumento, speculating about the apartments along that street too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evening<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We walked back to our apartment and did some laundry since the apartment had a washing machine. No dryer, just a nice, big clothes rack. I think most people don\u2019t use dryers, which are hard to install in apartments. Instead, they hang their clothes. The spin on the washing machine helps a lot, of course. We did some more laundry by handwashing with our non-perfumed hiking detergent and then spinning it in the machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The festival of S\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o was the big activity in Braga for the coming weekend. Braga has lots of festivals! Their Semana Santa is one of the biggest Christian celebrations anywhere. This year there was a Roman reenactment in May that people were still talking about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The S\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o  lighting ceremony in the Pra\u00e7a was supposed to be tonight, but it had been raining heavily around dinnertime. The rain had largely stopped by 21:00, so we walked back to Pra\u00e7a da Republica. However, staff were walking around among the crowd letting people know that the lighting was being postponed until Friday. We had fun taking some night pictures before heading back to the apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our Apartment After arriving in the dark last night, we discovered that our location in Braga, Pra\u00e7a Velha, wasn\u2019t just kind of close to historic things, but it was just inside the Arco da Porta … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-portugaljune2022","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":455,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transitorythoughts.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}