I was so excited to be finally seeing Dan that I actually didn't mind waking up at 6:00am to make sure I caught my 7:00am train from Redruth to Bristol airport. Jessica had very kindly agreed to drive me to the train station so we were both up at sparrows fart. The train journey and the plane ride were both uneventful, but after eight hours of travelling I was so happy to finally arrive in Faro. It took me a while to locate the owner of the apartment we were renting as the Ryanair flight had arrived a little early, and Helena wasn't there yet. After waiting for about 20 minutes I spotted someone rushing into the arrivals hall and took a guess that it was her and I was correct! I paid her the remainder of the cost for the rental and then received a lovely surprise, she was going to drive me over to the apartment!
It is such a lovely lovely place, much bigger than I had anticipated even though its large in the photographs. We have our own kitchen with every amenity we could possibly need, and a large balcony with its own braai where I know we will be spending a lot of time. After Helena had explained everything I needed to know about the flat and about Faro, she left me alone to unpack. Dan only arrives tomorrow morning with the timing of our flights, but I'm excited to see him so the wait isn't a problem! After unpacking my suitcase neatly into the cupboard and turning on the silent air conditioner, I took the newly empty suitcase and headed off to the large supermarket about 2kms away to buy some supplies.
I was a little overwhelmed by the selection in the supermarket and because nothing at all was in English. I bought a yummy looking pizza for my dinner and some fruit, which all looked and smelt great having been grown in a country with sunshine! It's amazing how used to the tasteless rubbish in UK supermarkets I have become. I bought some staples like bread, ham and butter, and was actually really proud of myself for figuring out which of the milks on sale was whole milk. As everything was in Portuguese and unhelpfully not similar enough to English for me to figure it out, I went by the calorie count! The packages didn't have the 2% etc I'm used to in the UK, but as whole milk still has all the fat (which really isn't much anyway!) it therefore has the highest calorie count, which is what I chose.
The walk home was really hot and I was so grateful to have turned on the air conditioner when I finally stumbled in! Being starving at this point because I hadn't had any lunch, I tried to turn on the oven to make my pizza, but it wouldn't work!! I did exactly as Helena had described but, when Dan figured it out the next day, you had to turn the timer on for the oven to work. I ended up making the pizza in the microwave. Now, I know you are all thinking, what, a microwave?! But there was a pizza button on it, which lead me to believe that this particular microwave could cook pizza. That was a lie. Microwaves turn a perfectly good pizza into a combination of rubber, plastic, cardboard and sawdust all at the same time, an amazing feat if you ask me. Pizza button my ass. I ended up having ham on toast and chatting to Dan on Skype before he left for the airport.
His flight arrived at 10:20am the next morning, and I woke up at 8:30am so I would have enough time to walk the 3kms or so to the main bus station to catch the bus to the airport. I arrived with plenty of time to spare and picked a great spot to be able to see Dan when he came through the gates, and I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually at 11:30am, I got a call from Dan's cell, the airline had lost his luggage in Lisbon! I was so engrossed with trying to find the address of our apartment to text to him so they would know where to send his bag that I didn't see him coming till he was right in front of me, so much for being excited and waving from a distance! We took a taxi home because I didn't want to figure out the busses, and we rang the airline from there to give them our address.
As Dan's bag would only be arriving at the flat at 8 that evening we ventured out down the road to the little supermarket just up the road that I hadn't yet been to, to find something for lunch and dinner. Wine is very cheap in Portugal so needless to say we bought a few more bottles, along with some incredibly cheap Parma ham, some cheese recommendations from a lady we had to mime our requests too and steak, potatoes and mushrooms for dinner. Dan got the fire going for a braai on the balcony. We snacked on the Parma ham and cheeses until dinner time, which was probably a good thing as the potatoes and mushrooms were lovely but the steak wasn't anything special at all, and neither of us was hungry enough to finish it. We washed it all down with more wine and Häagen-Dazs dulce du leche, my favourite ice cream!
The next morning we set off to explore Faro's old town. We took a shortcut pointed out to me by Helena that went straight through the city's local park, a lovely little green oasis near the middle of a city that has quite a few concrete apartments blocks and is conspicuously lacking in green spaces. On our way through we discovered what was to become our favourite spot in the whole of Faro, a tiny little cafe in the gardens. It comprised of just one small circular room with two windows, and tables, chairs and umbrellas surrounding it, all out in the open. As we walked up to our cafe on the first day I noticed a man drinking freshly squeezed orange juice which is one of my favourite things, so I asked Dan to order it for me. The little man that owns the cafe didn't speak any English, and Dan doesn't speak any Portuguese, but they managed to muddle through the order of an espresso and an orange juice, which came to just €2! Dan's espresso was only €0.50!
We then walked into the walked old town to explore. Strangely, half of the houses seem to be abandoned, but not recently as the building decay and vegetation growth leads us to believe they must have been closed up for at least 50-100 years. Unfortunately most of the buildings are shut up and locked tightly, and there isn't any chance to explore them. I find abandoned buildings absolutely fascinating, and was really quite disappointed at our inability to investigate any of the houses. Most of them are really grand with massive gardens, and from the snippets we have managed to see inside, they all used to be amazing. I wonder what happened here that left so many places deserted, none of which are for sale either.
We explored the streets of the old town, trying to find somewhere for lunch. Two places looked interesting but we carried on investigating till somewhere interesting caught our eye. We walked round the outside of the city wall next to the sea. Along the coast of Faro is The Ria Formosa lagoon, most of which is a national park and home to hundreds of different migrating birds. An artificial inlet was created in 1952 so that the city could have its own harbour. We passed the entrance to the harbour which is underneath the railway tracks and because of the height limitation all of the boats in the harbour are all really small speed boats. Just next to the harbour we found a cafe that we decided to eat at. We shared a delicious meaty pizza and Dan had a beer whilst I enjoyed a vodka and fresh passion fruit cocktail. After lunch we headed back to the apartment and enjoyed a bottle of wine on the balcony. We went back to the little supermarket to get more cheese and Parma ham and ate that for our dinner as we had had such a big lunch. Another wonderful evening was spent on the balcony enjoying wine and watching the sunset!
A friend of mine from junior school in Selebi Phikwe, Botswana, whom I hadn't seen since I was about 9 happened to be in Portugal up in Lisbon. I contacted her via Facebook and arranged for her to come and stay with us for a night in Faro, we did have a spare bedroom after all! Dan and I woke up leisurely on Saturday morning and grabbed an espresso and orange juice at our little cafe before navigating our way to the train station across town to collect Cara-Lee. Even though I haven't seen her in about 15 years, it was just like old times meeting up with her again! I introduced her to Dan and we set off for the cafe at the harbour to grab some lunch. Two pizzas, a few drinks and a long catch up later we all shared out Cara-Lee's bags and walked to the large supermarket I had visited on my first day.
We decided on salmon for dinner on the braai, so picked that up along with loads of fresh fruit and mixers for the Tanquaray Gin Dan had brought from the States. We passed a long and enjoyable afternoon chatting in the sun, listening to music and drinking many different fruit and gin cocktail concoctions. I can't remember them all but I know we had an apple and pear and mango and pineapple which were both lovely, especially as it was so hot. Dan got the braai going and for diner that night we had salmon in butter and lemon juice, baby potatoes and asparagus. Cara-Lee's train back to Lisbon the next morning was quite early so we went to bed at a reasonable time, after a few more drinks on the balcony.
We got up just after 8:00am and were out the door before 9:00am. We wanted to stop by our little man for coffee on the way but he was closed, probably because it was so early on a Sunday morning. As we had just gone back to the flat to relax and drink yesterday, we took Cara-Lee through the beautiful park and walked through the old town, to show her a little of Faro before she left. We got to the train station with time to spare and had drinks from their cafe at a little table outside before waving Cara-Lee off. Not knowing what to do next, Dan and I walked along the train station where the walls were adorned with the most amazing graffiti! Along one wall Dan found a hole in the brickwork and ducked through. Inside we found yet another abandoned building, an absolutely massive abandoned factory of some kind. We had a little snoop around but didn't spend too long inside because the roof looked a bit unstable, one wall was leaning at a funny angle, and we could see obvious signs that people had lived there, or may still be living there.
With no further plans for the day we decided to head to the one cinema in Faro to watch a movie. The cinema was in a large shopping centre 2 miles away. On the way there we found an outdoor gym similar to the one we saw in Cape Town, a brilliant idea in such a sunny country to get people exercising outside. We looked around a few shops at shoes for Dan before making our way to the cinema. I really wanted to watch Now You See Me as well as World War Z, and Dan wanted to watch the latter more, so we ended up getting tickets to see World War Z at 2:00pm. The shopping centre had a few choices of places to eat, but Dan chose McDonald's because he was really hungry, not a good choice when in a foreign country with loads of food choices available! I wanted to try a really great looking burger but the place was really weird and didn't give you a bread roll with the burger, so I ate a McDonald's too :D
Armed with some sweeties and a drink, we went in to watch the movie, and both thoroughly enjoyed it! For once, a zombie movie with a believable storyline, and loads of really great action scenes! We took a taxi home from the shopping centre because it was really quite hot, and we both didn't feel like walking the 4kms home. Another evening of relaxation on the balcony with a bottle of wine ensued! Because I had wanted to see Now You See Me so much, and we were given vouchers for €1.5 off each of our tickets plus 25% off the ticket price because it was Monday, we decided that was how we were going to spend our day. After walking to our little cafe in the park and enjoying a couple of orange juices and espressos each, we walked the rest of the way to the shopping centre. We got there a little earlier than it opened, so we shared lunch in a small restaurant of a tasty little chicken pita and chips.
The movie was great, really clever and I really enjoyed it! Dan liked it, but not as much as I did. We walked back to the flat via the big supermarket and picked up all the ingredients for spaghetti carbonara, which was delicious if I do say so myself! The next few days passed by in a haze of comfortable similarity. We went to our little cafe every single day, and I started having a ham and cheese toasted sandwich for brunch, Dan had one too on occasion. We went back to explore the old town and went into the museum. The woman selling spoke very little English and somehow we managed to convince her we were students who had left our cards at home, so she allowed us to purchase half price student tickets for just €1. The museum was really quiet and had very little security. It was full of interesting artefacts, one of my favourite was a huge mosaic floor tile display which was found under the streets of faro when some public works were being done.
We were told that there was an Arabian night evening happening, so we went into town later that day to have a look round. Annoyingly one of the gate guards told us to go all the way round to another gate to get tickets, and when we got there he didn't have any and told us to go back! I was getting very angry at them for messing us about and was ready to leave, but Dan convinced me to pay the €5 each to get our arm bands and just enjoy it. We wandered around the stalls and realised that a lot of the fun would be starting later in the evening, so we settled ourselves at a restaurants table in the square for dinner. The best thing that can be said about our sinner was that the location was wonderful, and the wine tasted good!
We were given two appetisers that were going out to all the tables, bruschetta and Parma ham that was good, and also some type of chickpea concoction I didn't like. I ordered tuna carpaccio and Dan ordered a cod dish with matchstick chips. The tuna was horrendous, thickly cut very old salted tuna and was not at all carpaccio in any way! Dan decided he didn't mind it and so ate mine. His meal was oddly fishy in taste, even the chips tasted like fish! We also realised that it wasn't hand cut and cooked chips but actually just a bag of potato chips poured on top of his fish. For some weird reason (probably the wine) we didn't complain about the meal, even when we were given the bill and I realised they had charged us for the appetisers too! I guess the hilarity of it all just made us not really care. While we were at dinner we watched a procession go by in the square of an arabian band, men riding camels and belly dancers. Having decided we were both quite tired and didn't want to stay for the evening performance (on a stage made up of a pile of salt...), we walked back through the Arabian night part of town on our way home.
I found a delicious recipe for prawns with a lime, honey, chilli, coriander and mayonnaise dressing. As Faro is right on the coast, the prawns are super cheap and fresh. We walked to the big supermarket and picked up some wine as well as all the ingredients for dinner. We bought 600g of prawns, which turned out to be such a hassle to clean that many. It was totally worth it though when we were finally done, they had cooked on the braai and had been tossed in the dressing. It was delicious and perfect in the hot weather with a glass of lovely white wine. We bought even more prawns the next day we loved it so much! We did try to make a cocktail at one stage too. I found a recipe on Pinterest for moscato and peach sangria, which sounded amazing. We went to the shop to try to find the ingredients, peaches, moscato, peach brandy and peach flavoured water.
The only ingredient we could find was peaches, and so we ended up buying some alcoholic melon flavoured thing and cava instead. As you can imagine, it tasted absolutely nothing like it was probably supposed to! Dan ended up drinking most of it and I just stuck with my white wine. We visited little supermarket quite a lot, and ended up snacking on Parma ham and cheese for most of the holiday. The watermelon we bought was lovely and nectarines in Portugal are also absolutely divine, the kind that dribble everywhere when you bite into them, despite your best intentions. On our walk to the park we met a very friendly, beautiful grey cat with a pink collar that I named Mr Pink even though she was a girl. She was there on a few occasions and absolutely loved being picked up and cuddled! Our little cafe in the park sold cheap bags of corn that you could use to feed the pigeons. After watching loads of people feed them Dan finally bought us a bag. They all arrive so quickly after you start feeding one or two, its insane! The pigeons are all quite take too and will happily fly onto your hand to eat, and the peacocks will peck out of your hand too!
Out of all the abandoned buildings one particular one in the old town caught our eye. It was really big and we assumed it may have been an old hotel at one stage. The front door was really intricate with wrought iron screens, carved wood and two beautiful wrought iron escutcheons. I decided that they were the only souvenir from Faro that I wanted and convinced Dan that they would be an amazing reminder of our time in Portugal. Now, I would have bought them from someone, and we actually asked at the town council who the abandoned buildings belonged too, but no one seems to know! So we took matters into our own hands. One morning we went to our cafe and Dan managed to mime to the little man that we wanted to borrow a flat head screw driver and that we would return it. Thankfully someone was there to translate for him, and we were lent one for the day.
The abandoned hotel is on quite a quiet street in the old town, so thankfully that made it easier to acquire the escutcheons. I was look out while Dan unscrewed the three screws on each of them, and we spent about 20 minutes switching between frantically unscrewing the escutcheons and pretending to be chatting on the phone, relaxing in the heat, looking at a map, and examining the house when someone walked by. Dan was ready to give up on the second one because two of the screws were very unyielding, but I took over and managed to coax them out just enough that he could do the rest of the work quickly! We eventually got them both off the door and made our way back to the apartment quickly incase we were seen! They really are very beautiful, the kind of thing that just isn't made any more.
Out the back of our apartment block is a large abandoned factory that Helena told me was partially knocked down to make way for a new harbour that wouldn't have the height restriction of the old one, but the work was stopped when the recession hit and there wasn't any extra money to spare. We walked down the road to explore it, jumped over a wall to get in, walked a little way into it before I got a bad feeling about being there and told Dan I wanted to leave. I don't know what it was but I just felt very uneasy about snooping around the place, and I'm usually the one going gun ho into a place with Dan being the voice of reason. He was all set to keep on exploring but I never ignore a gut feeling, so we got out of there. On the way back up the road I noticed that there was a makeshift washing line with someone's washing on it and other signs of life. I'm glad we left, I'm not sure I want to meet the people who live in there, even in the harsh light of day!
We were leaving super early the next morning, to catch our 6:00am and 6:25am flights, so we packed up the night before. I sent all of the things I had brought on holiday back with Dan, to try to help my packing situation when I eventually move to America. I was able to bring along 10kgs of hand luggage that all went into his bag, along with my Ugg boots and coat I had worn onto the plane. I looked pretty foolish arriving with such warm clothing when it was over 30'C outside, but it was worth it in the long run! The taxi company we rang to organise a taxi at 3:45am the next morning told us they were fully booked from over a week ago, eek!
I got in touch with Helena who thankfully found another company and actually booked the taxi for us too. It was really hard waking up so early in the morning, especially as We didn't want to leave Portugal and each other. This holiday has been such a gift that we both really needed, five months away from one another is really just too long! We had drinks in the airport once we got through security, Dan actually had a beer at 4:00am :D We bought me two croissants for breakfast and lunch as I'd on,y get home at 3:00pm, and we said a sad goodbye and got onto our respective flights. Dan's second flight from Lisbon to Philadelphia was severely delayed by over four hours, but he received an $800 voucher to use on the airline it he next year, which is a great bonus for us as we want to go to Hawaii next year, and now one of our flights are free!
Here's to the next big adventure with the love of my life :)
