Warning: this post is a rant about our hotel. If that sounds boring, please don’t waste your time reading it.

We arrived at our hotel, the Quinta das Lagrimas, in Coimbra around 4:30 yesterday afternoon after a long day and several stops on the trip from Sintra. You’ll recall from yesterday’s post that we saw the crypts of Pedro & Ines, the lovers who had serious in-law problems. This hotel, which (of course) used to be a royal palace, was where they were hooking up behind his father’s back (1).

It may sound cool to be staying in a former royal palace, but none of them were built in the last 200 years. Quinta das Lagrimas was built in 1326 (2). And in most cases, they were pretty much abandoned for years before someone scraped together the cash to buy and fix them up enough to get paying guests. So many of the systems and furnishings are, let us say, not Four Seasons caliber.

Our room is dark and poorly set up. It’s one of those rooms where all of the light comes from lamps. The 25’ x 9’ sitting room has two floor lamps, each with a single 60 watt-equivalent bulb. It’s furnished with a contemporary, very uncomfortable couch and a very old fashioned, very uncomfortable armchair.

The bedroom is twice as large, and has three lamps and six sconces which have much smaller bulbs – I’d guess 15W equivalents. There are windows all over the place, but even during the middle of the day it’s dim. At night it’s really dim.

One of the facts of modern travel is that we’ve stopped carrying a suitcase full of books, but traded that for a bunch of mobile devices – phones, tablets, cameras – that need charging. So we need outlets. This room has one outlet for each lamp. So charging anything on your night table is not possible, unless you’re willing to give up the lamps. The TV has an extra outlet, so we can charge our stuff there. There’s a desk which has one outlet for the lamp. So no charging there if you want to be able to see anything.

The shower is a tub shower, which means you need to step over a fairly high ledge to get in and out. We get two bath towels. I understand that we are only two people, but really, for this price, they could give us one or two extra.

On the positive side, there is a private park on the grounds – they call it a garden. It’s a pleasant place to take a stroll.

You can also see the Fountain of Love where Pedro and Ines hooked up, and the Fountain of Tears where she was assassinated murdered by her prospective father-in-law, the King (3).

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(1) “Lagrimas” means tears, as Ines’ tears stained the fountain in the courtyard here. We looked and didn’t see this.

(2) It says “Since 1326” on the doormat in front of the hotel.

(3) To be fair, I found what might be a non-fairy tale version of what actually happened. I was totally unable to follow it – it involved cousins, adultery, Kings planning to invade other Kings, etc. Both Pedro and Ines were involved, possibly on more than one side (there appear to be more than two sides involved). It made the scheming and shenanigans from Succession seem simple and straightforward.