St. Mary Old Church

Second day of our bike trip from Santa Comba Dão to Viseu (Portugal) – 19^th June 2013.

After a good night of rest at José Severino Hotel in Tondela, we were surprised by a quite diverse and tasty breakfast.
We were ready to go back to our bikes and to cycle to Viseu, the ending point (or starting point) of the “Ecopista do Dão”.

Once again we stopped a few times to find geocaches and we even left our bikes for a while to go for a walk along the “Rota dos Moinhos de Água D’alte” (Route of Watermills D’alte).

Route of Watermills D’alte

This is a short distance walking trail (4.5 Km) that begins and ends next to the former train station of Torredeita and takes us to a forest zone where we can observe several watermills located next to a stream.

After the walk, we had lunch at the former station of Torredeita. This station as the particularity of having an old train parked in there.

We arrived in Viseu about 8 hours after we had left Tondela.

Old train (Torredeita)

We looked for the “Pousada da Juventude” (Youth Hostel), where we were going to spend the next 2 nights. However, when we arrived at the alleged address of the hostel we find out that, by mistake, I had gotten the address of the “Pousada de Portugal” (Portugal’s Hostel) instead of the one of the Youth Hostel.

We walked around to see if, by chance, the hostel was nearby, but it wasn’t.
Luckily, we found two police officers in a police car who guided us to the hostel. They drove ahead of us and we followed them in our bikes. During this small journey we immediately understood why Viseu is called the city of the roundabouts.
We thanked the police officers, parked our vehicles and went to the Youth Hostel to check in.

“Ecopista do Dão”

Compared to the other few Youth Hostels we know in Portugal this one is very simple and not so cozy. For that reasons it’s also cheaper than the other ones. But it was equipped with everything we needed.

We left the hostel late in the afternoon to go finding a restaurant to have dinner, which we thought would be a simple task.
We walked, walked and walked and there wasn’t any sign of an open restaurant. But then we found ourselves in the historic center of Viseu and there the difficulty was to decide in which restaurant we would like to go.

Viseu

We went to a restaurant that we found out later was called CR7. I ordered “polvo à lagareiro” (lagareiro style octopus), which is a dish composed of octopus with potatoes and olive oil coked in the oven. JB ordered “bife com 3 pimentas” (three-pepper steak). We enjoyed the food, but, because of the large portions, we were unable to finish all.

Next, we went for a walk to explore a little bit of Viseu.

We found an ice cream shop named “Tré Santi” and decided to go inside. I ordered passion fruit ice cream but the waiter switched my ice cream with the one ordered by another client. So, when I tried the first spoon I felt disappointed because I had not tasted any passion fruit flavor, instead it was something milky. It was when the waiter approached us excusing himself for having switched my ice cream with another one. Then he brought me the passion fruit ice cream and I enjoyed the ice cream I wanted, which was very tasty.

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