Faro
Trip Start
Nov 23, 2005
1
113
133
Trip End
Feb 27, 2007
Faro,
Portugal
Monday, September 25, 2006
We left the train station in Albufeira and had to take a short bus ride to a central bus station, and then another bus to the old town center of Albufeira. We would look for a room for the night. We got on the bus and missed the stop for the old town, the driver said not to worry he did a loop that would come back around to it again. We still didn't know where to get off the bus and the driver forgot to tell us so again we missed the stop! Some British tourists finally helped us to get off at a place where they said we could easily walk to the town center.
We would check out to see if Albufeira was a place we would want to stay for an extended time to relax
Bone chapel 1
. It was quickly evident that no, this was definitely not the place. It couldn't get anymore over touristed if it tried. As our Lonely planet book says it sold its sole to mass tourism back in the 60's. We thought we would give it a try anyways. It has different areas of holiday apartments and hotels clumped together, in the old town there are many hotels as well. The place is so loaded with British tourists you would think you were in a warmer version of England. The weird thing is everyone from Britain visiting this area seems to have brought a baby with them, there are baby buggies or prams as they call them everywhere. Sometimes we would be walking down the street and half a dozen would be coming at us at one time. Jack was wanting to make a video of them and have it narrated with the British are coming, the British are coming! This area really goes out of it's way to cater to families with children, they are allowed everywhere, even in the bars. We saw babies sitting right up at the bar with their parents on the stools, I wouldn't be surprised if we caught one drinking out of the draught tap in front of them!There is very little here to make you aware you are in Portugal, most of the restaurants are trying to cater to British with English style food, fish and chip joints a plenty, full English breakfasts being advertised everywhere as well. At night we wandered through the old town streets, they were crammed with tourists pounding back the drinks and listening to Neil Diamond impersonators belting out the lyrics with microphones
Bone chapel 2
. It was all a bit too much for us, not our idea of what we were looking for in Portugal. We will check out a few more places in the Algarve, hopefully another place will suite us better.The Algarve is the southern portion of Portugal. It is over 200kms long with 150 kms being beach. The western half of the beaches have large rock formations with most beaches set in coves, the eastern half has long stretches of sandy beach. In some areas the beaches are not along the coast but on long islets off shore. Small boats will run you out to them. This area of Portugal remains warm well into the winter months, the real off season doesn't start until November, but people still come to enjoy it through the winter months to escape from other cold climates. We have met many people from Europe that come to stay during the winter. Most locals would still probably consider it cold, but the tourists have been known to still take dips in the pools into January. We were also surprised to find out that Portuguese is up in the top 10 most spoken languages in the world. In fact it ranks at number 8, with over 190 million speakers, over 120 million of them in Brazil alone.
We decided to head a bit further east to the city of Faro. This is where the main airport is that serves the Algarve area. It is the only larger city of the Algarve. , the rest are mostly just tourist resort areas or small fishing villages. We thought since it had a life of it's own besides tourism, it might be a better place to visit. Again we were amazed how close everything is. We were in Faro after a short 40 minute train ride.
We arrived at the station in Faro and headed into town to find a hotel
Bone chapel 3
. We came across a reasonably priced one fairly quickly. We had our own large balcony, and a huge room with an en suite. The couple who own the place are very friendly, they don't speak English but they try to help out in any way they can. We had a mini mart next door to our hotel room. In the morning we could clearly hear the beep, beep, beep of the items being scanned through the till. To the other side of the hotel was a wine and port specialty shop. The guy has been collecting for years. He has some port that is from the early 1900's. Our hotel balcony also overlooked a square where many bums hung out each night. They would start drinking at about 6 or 7pm each night and then start to argue with each other, it got quite comical at times.Right away we could feel the difference between this place and Albufiera, first of all we didn't have touts asking us every 2 minutes if we needed a room for the night. It was a city with a nice feel to it. It was small enough that you could get around to most places on foot. We spent 3 nights here. We wandered around the city taking in the cobble stoned streets and old buildings. Many of the common areas, sidewalks and pedestrian streets are done in mosaics of small basalt rock. It is pounded into sand. This can be seen in many towns and cities around Portugal. It is very predominant in the cities of the Algarve area, it gives them a unique charm
Building full of graffiti Faro
. The old town area is very neat. There is also a large area of new town if you go up hill, including large hopping centers if you go out to the airport area.Faro is a University town, so there were lots of youth around to keep it lively. It seemed to be initiation time, every night there were crowds of them gathered, they would be doing cheers just near our hotel. It was so loud. Many of them had costumes on, we saw one guy wearing a small cardboard car. They were made to do songs and different activities in the streets. The first night we heard the chanting and cheering we thought some kind of protest was going on.
We went to a church that has a bizarre chapel built out of over a thousand monks bones. It was so creepy, it was literally built from bones and mortar only. It had hundreds of skulls stuck into the walls as well.
The Algarve is so easy to get around that you could stay in any one place and do day trips to almost everywhere else. We took the train to another town called Tavira for the day. It is an old historic town, very cute and quiet. We wandered around the cobbled streets, went to the remains of a castle and saw some cute churches, the town is along a large canal and is dubbed the little Venice of the Algarve
Chruch exterior Faro 2
. Having just come from Venice it definitely didn't compare, but had it own charms.The airport is located only 6kms from Faro so the planes come in really loud and low over the buildings, kind of freaks you out when you are walking around sometimes and one comes in and takes you by surprise.
There is a 3 circuit bus system that goes all over town, it only cost 50 cents for any one of the routes, so it is a great way to see the city. Just don't ask the driver where it goes, or pull out your map, they are really grouchy!! The tourist info just laughed when we told them this and said that's why we are here to help the tourists.
We decided as nice as Faro was, it was not the place we wanted to stay for an extended amount of time either. Even though we are not so called "beach people" Faro's closest beach is 10 km's outside the town. We wanted to be closer to the beach, after all that is one of the main reasons to come to the Algarve, to enjoy the beautiful beaches here.
Before we look further in the Algarve a side trip to Seville, Spain
