Coimbra

To help you explore Coimbra to its full potential, the AAL Forum 2017 recommends downloading the app ‘Coimbra City Tour’, and invites you to discover the city. The easy-to-use app is provided by the Central Portuguese tourism board and transforms your smartphone or tablet into a tailor-made, customisable audio tour. Simply add your available times and interests into the app, and the guide will create a route to match your requirements. It will work easily around any spare minutes you have outside of the AAL Forum and will offer the best options available to you, taking into consideration opening and closing times of monuments and where you wish to begin and end your tour. If you are worried about revisiting...Read More

AAL have confirmed the chart-hitting band Anaquim, will be headlining the AAL Forum 2017 at the closing party on Wednesday 4th October. Founded in 2006, Anaquim is a Portuguese five-man band that mixes musical traditions with international pop/rock patterns. The band from Coimbra combines folklore and fado with more main-stream lively acoustic indie rock to create a genre that resonates with fans around the world. Drawing upon influences from many famous Portuguese traditional poets and musicians such as Zeca Afonso, as well as echoing French music and culture, Anaquim has received accolades from home to Hungary, Namibia and South Africa. Their first album, “As vidas dos Outros” (“Other people’s lives”) reached the top 12 in the Portuguese top-seller charts whilst...Read More

AAL Forum participants have the chance to win a free evening city bus tour of Coimbra. The forum is offering a lucky 98 participants the opportunity to see the sights of Coimbra at night. The two bus tours will meander through the city with a local tour-guide who will provide detailed descriptions of some of the city’s most beautiful attractions and architecture, as well as the fascinating history behind it all, as you enjoy the sights in the warm summer evening. The first 49 registered applicants will enjoy the tour for free, whilst the other 49 spaces will be on a first-come-first-serve basis. To register, simply fill out the form before the 29th September – the sooner you register the...Read More

Taking place on Tuesday 3rd October and Thursday 5th October, AAL participants can enjoy complementary golf lessons at Coimbra’s world class Quinta das Lágrimas’ golf club. Quinta das Lágrimas Golf Course is one of the oldest courses in Portugal where several national and international tournaments take place, and will be the venue of the renowned Portuguese Open Pitch & Putt tournament in October 2017. The Quinta das Lágrimas Golf Academy was founded in 1999 as an investment by the Quinta das Lágrimas group and with support from João Lagos Sport as a way to add social value to the city and diversify sports activities for the community. The golf lessons are available to anyone of any golfing ability to let...Read More

This year, the AAL Forum is offering participants the mouth-watering opportunity to taste the wine and cuisine from the Centro de Portugal region at the forum’s very own Schist Village. Did you know? Rabaçal’s cheese originates in the area of Penela. Its taste and aroma is unique due to Penela’s pastures being rich in thyme. Curiosities like these will all be brought to life at the Schist Village where presentations, tastings and hands-on practicals will be waiting to be savoured and experienced for a real slice of Portugal. Centro de Portugal is renowned for its exquisite food, combining flavours from the sea with those from the mountains. Fresh seafood, juicy sun-ripened fruits, free-range forest pork and meadow grazing lamb are just a...Read More

A melody that expresses the Portuguese spirit, veiled in yearning and sweet melancholy yet tinged with joy and hope, fado is one of Europe’s most beautiful musical styles and is still traditionally celebrated in the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon. The music genre originated in Portugal in the early 1800s but only began to appear in Lisbon after 1830 before finally finding a popular rhythm in the early 1900s and one that is still followed today. Literally meaning ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’, fado uses mandolins and a Portuguese 12-string guitar to accompany one singer, creating the pained melody that draws the listener in as it seeps through the streets. Whilst Lisbon’s fado is considered the more well-known style, Coimbra has its...Read More