November 19

Lisbon to Porto / Excursion to Coimbra University

Today was our day to bid farewell to Lisbon.  Unlike yesterday where we had beautiful weather it was in the upper 40's and raining as we pulled away from the hotel.  We drove for an hour and a half, took a "comfort stop," and then continued another hour to reach the city of Coimbra which houses the oldest university in Portugal.  We walked around part of the campus, and the highlight of the tour came when we went inside the beautiful library.  We were told that this entire library was recreated digitally to be used in Disney's live action "Beauty and the Beast" as the Beast's library!  We also learned that a lot of the traditions of the university were used by JK Rowlings, who spent many years in the area, in the Harry Potter books.  Pretty cool.  Then we rode for another hour and a half to reach our ship where we moved in to our stateroom.  But at the evening's briefing our Program Director, the wonderful Sophia, introduced a special guest on the cruise, a program director who was only observing the cruise.  Lo and behold it was the same program director my sister and I had this past fall in Eastern Europe....and we thought Rick was amazing.  So I introduced him to my wife and then he joined our table for dinner.  We had such a great time sharing stories and there was lots and lots of laughter.  What a great first day to the cruise.