Pre-trip work!

 April 25, 2025  The Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra.

It's been an adventure living in the middle of a city, relying on public transportation, and having people around you constantly, but sooner or later, your soul needs to be fed by spending time in nature. Today, we took a 20 minute walk to the university's botanical garden to fuel up on green space. It was wonderful!

The Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra was founded in 1772 by the Marquis of Pombal. It currently includes 19 acres of forest and 10 acres of classic garden

"In 1854, the engineer Pezerat presented his project for a greenhouse (which is still in existence), marking a technological advance in the use of iron and glass in architecture in Coimbra. This building was completed in 1865. The works, carried out between 1944 and 1949, involved the addition of a fountain in the central square, stone benches, a cold greenhouse and the renovation of the thoroughfares between the various sections of the garden and the woodland area." from the Web.

In Europe, every adventure begins with stairs!

Here's the layout for you "map" types.

A lot of the trees were from Australia. 

The tree below.

What is it about children and trees? It doesn't matter how big you get, trees are for climbing! 

Paul

Clare

Plan B. 

Simon

Such a ham!

This is an aqueduct from Roman times.

More of the aqueduct.

This shot gives you a sense of the size of the aqueduct. 

Snapdragons grow everywhere here! Like wildflowers!

An artistic layout of the garden.

The central square was my personal favorite area.

On to the bamboo forest!

See chapel below.

What a lovely afternoon! Here is a couple of musical groups from today. They appear to be students, maybe from different houses. (American frat or sorority type houses? They have different flags.) The students from the university wear black capes as their tradition. It's fun to see them around.