Portugal: Algarve East

The train to the Algarve from Lisbon stops in Faro, but we were due to stop at a small town north of Faro for a week-long house-sit to look after two small dogs in a beautiful home there.

Loulé

Anne joined the trusted house-sitters online community for house-sitting with pets last year.  This would be our third house-sit.  The house-sits are a mixed bag because I suppose there is a high likelihood of the animals having special needs if someone prefers having someone stay in their house over the alternatives, but in our case the needs are not onerous and the animals are a pleasure to look after.

This home had a large pool but it was just a little too early in the season for us to benefit from it.  

The setting was so tranquil and we were able to drive in one of their cars to nearby open orchards (olives, cork and carob trees).

Our walks with the little dogs took us past some more ruins.  The reasons for these ruins had been variously reported as abandonment and complications with inheritance but our house-sitter host also pointed out that during periods of history, families emigrated from Portugal and the laws require that the properties that are left are the responsibility of the descendants who must agree on any sale.

Since descendants who might have emigrated during political upheaval might be impossible to find, the burden on a potential buyer to resolve who should be paid for the property is a huge deterrent.

The dogs loved the beach, which was a 20min drive from Loulé and there are strings of long empty beaches (at this time of year) with fine sand.

We took our hosts out to dinner on our last night in the town to a small Portuguese restaurant where we met the owner and his wife.  The restaurant had this amazing photograph hanging on the wall which the owner pointed out was incredible for the fact that there are hundreds of people in the town's plaza and every one of them appears to be looking right at the camera.

The reason is that it was during an Easter festival and was the first time any of the people in the town had seen a camera.   They must have all watched as this contraption was set up on its tripod on some elevated vantage point and they are caught staring at the spot where the photographer stood.

Our house-sit host drove us down to Faro, the main city of the Algarve , where we rented a car for the duration of our stay in the south.  As is usual, the car rental agency persuaded us that we needed additional insurance which was extremely annoying.  We had already established that our credit card and ordinary car rental didn't cover accident insurance so it was with a long face that I agreed to pay it while Anne waited with our luggage.

Tavira

My cousin, Trevor, who now lives in Lagos had sent me some suggestions of where to visit in the Algarve and he suggested that we start in the far West, close to the Spanish border.  The town closest to the border is Tavira and Anne found an AirBnb in a small town called Cabanas on the outskirts of Tavira.

 

The AirBnb we stayed at was a far cry from what we had in Porto - it was beautifully prepared with a welcome basket that had a bottle of red wine and a host who welcomed us and showed us around the apartment with lots of tips for the town and surrounds.

View from our AirBnb balcony in Tavira

The town had a road along the beach side that felt like a British holiday town, advertising full English breakfasts.  

True to predictions people switched to English more or less on meeting us or when they heard us greeting them in Portuguese.  This was a relief because after a few weeks here we are still completely lost in the pronunciation of words even though reading signs often makes sense from our Spanish.

 

The town doesn't have direct access to the beach.  There is a small, shallow inlet that goes along the length of Tavira and its outskirts with two large islands about 50m across from the edge of town and you can take a ferry from Cabanas or from Tavira to the island and walk to the beach from there.
There is an infrastructure of restaurants and rows of beach chairs that you can use on the main island.  We didn't visit the second island during the week that we were there but spent a morning on the main island.

 

Of course we were reminded that there are very wealthy people hanging around and living in this part of Portugal.  A Lamborghini pulled up opposite us one morning and the owner had found two ways of saying the same thing to anyone who happened to see him and his car.

 The town of Tavira has a castle and some big cathedrals and offers a small "train" ride on a truck that tows carts through the town and over the cobbles big enough, in some parts of the town, to shake you up.

The "train" stopped in a few attractive parts of the town.  Again some run down apartments in somewhat empty streets.

Across the river from the castle is a restaurant and shopping area that has beautiful facades.

Some streets on the side of town with the castle have quaint houses.

The view from the castle of the town shows a similar character to the other Portuguese towns that we have seen with white walls and terracotta tiled roofs.

 

I paused at a few real estate shops in the town to see what house prices are in the region.  They are cheaper than US prices along the coast but not by a great deal.  

 

Good quality, free standing homes range from $750k-$1.5mil so we'll keep traveling for now.