Welcome to Portugal - Braga

 

BRAGA

Braga is a quiet lovely town North of Porto and less than an hour by train. They say 180,000 people live there, but we certainly didn't see them.  The streets were also marble cobblestone and varying in elevation. There's a lovely pedestrian area as well as interspersed parks and a few gardens. There's also a fair amount of groceries, pharmacies, laundry, stores, and malls.

Worthy of note - Portugal doesn't observe Thanksgiving (shocking we know), so all their streets and stores have moved on to decorating for Christmas. 

We liked the feel and pace however, there are not a lot of cultural or activities that we are accustomed to seeing in larger cities. We felt like after the first two weeks of living there, we'd be looking outside the town for entertainment. Even though we could hop on the train to Porto for about €6, we didn't know if want to have to continually travel for enrichment.

On a positive note, we did have a pretty good italian lunch

Next up:  Coimbra