Four days of November in England and we'd had enough of the cold and rain, so it was onto the plane for southern Portugal, flying into Faro on the Algarve. Lew's friends Melissa and Mike had kindly let us use their house in Olhao (pronounced olly-ow!), a small town, which is the biggest fishing port in Portugal. The house is tiny, literally one room stacked three stories high with a roof terrace, and all the houses are packed in tightly like the local sardines, which means you get to know the neighbours very quickly!
The view from the roof terrace...
The streets are a maze of tiny passages, many of them too small for cars, so it took us the full week to get the route to the bakery sorted without getting lost and having to backtrack.
We loved it, walking everywhere, as nothing is too far away, watching the locals going about their daily routines, the kids playing in the streets late into the night, the men sitting and watching the world go by their doorstep...Portugal is certainly a place to kick back and relax, no-one is going anywhere in a hurry. They love to talk, and spend ages chatting on street corners....
Or attending important meetings....
But more about the houses......in particular the tiles. Portugese houses are clad with an incredible array of colourful tiles. Even the poorest looking houses can have a beautiful selection covering the walls, which makes it difficult to put the camera down sometimes.
There are those who like to maintain the appearance of their houses...
And those who obviously spend their euros elsewhere!
The houses on the mainland are usually two-three storeys high
But the houses out on Culatra, a village built on a sandspit just off the coast, are all single storey and very geometric and colourful...
Whilst Olhao is on the southern coast of Portugal, there is no actual beach, as there are huge tidal sandy banks a kilometre or so off-shore, with Culatra being one of the "islands" visible from the shore. We took a boat trip out there and had lunch on the beach, then walked around the village. No point in having a vehicle here, just the odd tractor, as there are no roads, its all sand.
The population depends on the fishing, and its obviously still made up of lots of one-man operations, no Mr Talley or Sealord here. This is from Culatra looking back to Olhao.
Have I mentioned the fish? A large amount of the fish caught locally is sold locally, at the big fish market on the waterfront every morning. It was just as a fish market should be, loud, crowded and full of the biggest selection of fresh fish, most of it still wriggling, and much of it unrecognisable to us.
I ate fish every day, from grilled sardines to whole sea bass, from fresh tuna, to cataplana - the local fish stew cooked in a copper dish with a domed lid
One thing even I didn't try was bacalau, or salt cod, which was everywhere - it has the appearance and texture of thick cardboard, due to the amount of salt used to preserve it, and just didn't look that appetising - this man picked up several pieces and gave them a good bang before walking away!
We also came across the lesser-spotted coat-hanger fish down at the port....no idea what they do with this.....most of the flesh seems to have gone....
Opposite the fish market is the fruit and veg market, which also runs every day, and spills out onto the waterfront on a Saturday, when gran and grandpa come down from the hills to sell their 12 oranges and 5 courgettes that they've grown that week. This lady even had the old fashioned weighing scales for precision accuracy.
We used buses and trains to get around to the nearby towns of Faro and Tavira. Faro seemed to be heavily populated by storks, who make their nests in the most exposed high up points they can find, which are usually church towers!
Tavira is a beautiful town with a river running through the centre, and an definite air of prosperity about it, with some beautiful buildings and churches.
Tavira also had the most refreshing example of good old fashioned self-responsibility being alive and well in Portugal: everyone is encouraged to walk up onto the castle walls, which were a good 15-20 metres high, no hand-rails, no barriers, not even a warning sign to be careful not to wobble off the edge....fantastic! Take the children and your grandmother up there to enjoy the view!
We loved Portugal for so many reasons - the buildings, the people, the weather, the food. The one down side?....Portugese sewage systems are so bad they can't even deal with TOILET PAPER down the toilet!! You have no idea how hard it is to break the habit of a lifetime and not hurl the paper southwards every time. It takes full concentration and you can't take your mind off the task for one moment, otherwise its out with the barbecue tongs...!!!
We also took a quick trip to Seville while we were down that end of the world, but that deserves a blog of its own, so I'll finish with one more tile photo....
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