Some light (in every sense) relief from the bog came in the form of a trip to Portugal and Spain for 10 nights. This is going to be one long post – I can’t be doing with those clickbait things where I try to entice you to accidentally click on an advert for some shoddy online retailer or other. It’s only lightly-edited and it shows.
Day 1 – Friday. Arrival in Faro.
We arrived into Faro airport just past 2pm, and picked up a hire car from Europcar, avoiding being upgraded to some other vehicle that didn’t seem like it would be any better than the one I thought I’d booked.
I clearly explained my criteria for a suitable car: easy to park, and able to go up hills (I had a bad experience with a Nissan Micra in Madeira once, and don’t think cheating the reaper again is a guarantee).
We ended up with an Audi A3, a brand I’d never driven before for various reasons, mostly with their roots in a lack of disposable income. My opinion of Audi drivers had been coloured slightly by the number of years of sheer unrivalled idiocy displayed by them in various places, but I was to learn a humbling lesson: it’s actually the car’s fault. That’s surely the only explanation for some of the crazy manoeuvres I felt the car doing on my behalf. Why would I pull out into two opposing streams of traffic without a care in the world? We may never know, but I’m blaming Herbie’s evil compatriot.
We’d booked 5 nights in a ‘villa’ on a farm north of Faro, as we thought it’d be a better “get away from it all” experience. It was, except for forest fires, barking dogs and very cutely-pestering cats. The ‘villa’ earnt its quotation marks by virtue of being large enough for two people, but certainly no more.
There was a weird mezzanine thing with a ladder going up to it, which just about had enough space for a double mattress underneath the very low ceiling. Sort of the concrete building equivalent of the luton part of a motorhome. Thankfully, there was a proper main bedroom at ground level, but it wasn’t exactly massive either.
The highlight of the accommodation was the private terrace outside the main living area, which looked out onto the rows of lemons and avocados that the owner was growing.
He’d suffered at the hands of the global recession, and decided to do something a bit different. He taught himself how to build and farm, then got stuck into it. I’d say he was mostly successful in his endeavours, although the YouTube instruction videos might have glossed over some fine details of building regulations, such as the fitting of smoke alarms.
It transpires that Portugal is the ideal place to be growing avocados, and of course they’re an extremely popular and profitable crop. He’s going to be exporting them all to a cooperative in Spain, which doesn’t have as good a climate for growing them, apparently (more extremes of temperature). The farm had been previously growing oranges, which are pretty much a commodity and not worth the effort.
There weren’t really any shops nearby, so we’d stocked up at the Aldi (about 10 minutes’ drive away). Every morning we were there, we sat out on the sunny terrace and ate our fantastic tomato, mozzarella, olive, etc. breakfast while feeding morsels to the cats when they looked pitiful enough.
Day 2 – Saturday. Loule market, followed by a forest fire.
I should really write more about that, but it was largely as you’d imagine from the description above: we went to a market selling the sort of things you can buy anywhere else, then went back to the villa to watch a nearby forest fire roar away. There are photos too – helicopters braving the flames, dropping water from huge containers, etc. You should see them.
Day 3 – Sunday. A day of rest, mostly.
Brushed off ash from forest fire that had landed on loungers. Read a book, caught some rays. Drove to Villamoura for the evening – massive resort town, but actually seemed quite decent. Had a really nice grilled whole sea bream. Mustn’t grumble.
Day 4 – Monday. Faro
We drove into Faro and circled the large free parking area until we finally found a space. Unfortunately, it was slightly more stressful that it needed to be due to the ‘assistance’ of parking hustlers. They seem to hang Siren-like around areas that don’t look like proper spaces and then encourage tourists to dash their hire cars into them. Apparently, this would then merit some form of tip. We did eventually find a proper clearly-visible empty bay and that too had a hustler waving around it, completely redundantly. Having parked, we ignored them and left the car to fend for itself.
They didn’t seem as menacing as the teenagers in Sicily some years ago that took money to ‘look after’ your car for the day… I suppose there haven’t been many films about organised crime syndicates in the Algarve – they need to work on that.
Anyway, Faro has the usual fountains and grand old buildings, which were good to wander past. We went into the tourist info office and ended up going to a Fado guitar performance before lunch. It was a bit of a mixed bag, with explanation and some playing. I’d recommend going to a full evening performance somewhere, as it’s not quite the same without the singing part. We had actually heard quite a bit of full-on Fado in the past, as we’ve been to a few performances by Mariza, so didn’t feel particular cheated and the guy performing was interesting at least.
Went to the cathedral in the afternoon – well worth a visit, especially for the unusual north German-design 18th century church organ:
If you came to this page looking for exciting pictures of German organs and now find yourself disappointed, PLEASE LEAVE NOW.
Day 5 – Tuesday. Beach at Barril
Anchor graveyard, little train, salt marshes, etc. A great place to visit. I hope you weren’t expecting a brilliantly insightful travelogue.
In the evening, we walked to local restaurant and had amazing Cataplana Algarvia:
Day 6 – Seville
We dropped the car back at Faro airport, then caught a coach to Seville from there – all coaches go from the same area, so it’s easy to navigate. Got taxi from main coach station (Plaza de Armas) to the apartment management company office – about €6. Left suitcases, etc. for a couple of hours until checkin at 4pm. We killed time by finding a café in the nearby Avenue of Hercules, where we ate tapas and drank beer while wondering how easy it would be to get contracts to work in Seville. Note that going from Portugal to Spain pushes the clock on an hour, due to Hitler (that guy is really starting to annoy me). Apparently, Franco-era Spain wanted to align with Nazi Germany so changed their time zone to match. There’s a BBC article here covering it. Changing it back would be a fantastic anti-fascist statement, along with being very logical and incidentally generating contract income for sun-starved software developers to change everything that would break in various computer systems. Por favor.
Day 7 – Seville cathedral
Hot again. Queued in full sun for a while before getting into cathedral (only opens fully at 11am). Went on a 2-hour (should have been 1.5 hour) guided tour of cathedral rooftops. Was okay with the height thing until the guide kept going on about previous roof collapses and results of earthquakes. He even handed around photos.
Stunning views from above, and inside cathedral too. Has 80 chapels, and a very ostentatious tomb for Christopher Columbus (well, a small bit of him, anyway).
Meal at very popular tapas place. Some good, some bad. Tuna sushi with wasabi ice cream was excellent. Tempura wasn’t – not very light batter. Note: tempura was actually from Portugal originally, not Japan. Duck magret wasn’t worth bothering with – would have taken the sleuthing skills of the similarly-named French police detective to find any flavour lurking within. Can’t remember the other dish. See, I’m not just a slapdash travel writer – my craft extends to food too.
Day 8 – Real Alcazar
Awesome. I could (and might) write a lot more about the place, but it’s not happening today. One of the most amazing places I’ve ever visited, and you have to bear in mind that I spent 4 years in Swindon so am not easily impressed. A picture tells a thousand words, so here’s an essay:
In the mid-afternoon, we walked to the Plaza de Espanha – a large area with tiling representative of the different regions of Spain. Disappointing facilities and an annoying fan salesman, but otherwise nice enough. Honestly it’d have to have been pretty special to make an impression after our morning’s extravaganza. I mean, even just sitting down to eat outside the cafe in the gardens at Real Alcazar, we had a show from a local peacock.
Here’s a shot of some regionally-significant ceramics:
Actually, looking at some of the other photos I took there, it was pretty cool overall:
Day 9 – Parasol
We got to the parasol for 10-ish.
There was a market beneath, and we were given what seemed to be a free pork morsel to eat. Nothing bad happened as a consequence.
We saw a church, an art gallery, then flamenco in evening.
A tapas and beer crawl finished the evening:
Day 10 – Last day in Seville
Top breakfast. It’s ham and cheese on toast, but awesome:
Quick Macarena.
Bus back to Faro after dealing with phenomenally unhelpful tourist info woman in Seville train station. Bus goes from immediately outside the main railway station, on the left as you face it (right outside Macdonalds). Not a difficult concept to communicate.
Evening out in Faro. Sunset at Italian place by harbour. Wrong food, but nice (salted cod thing). Band LM33 at bar across the harbour.
Day 11 – Last day in Faro
Breakfast, then chilling out on balcony in sun with view of church.
Trauma trying to get taxi to airport (reception couldn’t get anyone – V hailed one outside in the end).