Medieval castles, cobblestone villages, captivating cities and golden beaches: the Portugal experience can be many things. History, great food and idyllic scenery are just the beginning… many tourism guidebooks lure visitors with such imagination, including the author of this article. But it really is so: Portugal is European hedonism at its best, where everyday life connects to the vibre of seasons, glass of wine, slice of cheese, sound of ocean, smell of fish, and unexplain

Along the Atlantic coast lies the Beira Litoral that is usually filled with tourists who like to surf and sunbath on miles and miles of sandy beaches. While Coimbra is a sophisticated university town in this area, on everyone’s mind come seaside resort towns such as Figueira da Foz, but Aveiro stands out and is well worth of a visit, for sightseeing and for gastronomy. Aveiro is quite a feast for the eyes. It has a very distinctive youthful and energetic buzz with its modern

Somewhere on half way between Coimbra and Aveiro there is a small town that is in none of the tour guides and has no particular mention even in the Portuguese tourism websites. But for real connoisseurs of local cuisines and those whose buds are activated by the smell of roasted meat, Mealhada is a capital! Each weekend (but also during the week) thousands of families literally pour into Mealhada to have the best suckling pig in the country. Idea of Portuguese people as those

Harry Potter and his friends, dressed in fancy black hoods, walk uphill to the gates of Hogwarts. Or this might be the case if you do not know that “Harry Potter” and his friends are in fact students of the University of Coimbra, second oldest university in Europe, who are still dressing according to the old traditions. Coimbra influenced heavily J.K. Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter books, and scenes that you might be familiar with from the movies are also bearing a mark o