Everyone rests on a Sunday

 

Our planning for this leg of the journey has been a little lacking. We didn't consider that holidays in Portugal are pretty much a no-go regardless of how touristy your town is. Shops were closed, restaurants closed - most with signs indicating, "Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!", and their imminent return sometime after January 4th. What we neglected to consider, and really didn't know, was that Portugal is still a very religious country, so nothing is open on Sundays, regardless. Sunday is church day, and family day, and a day of rest. No groceries, no pharmacies, no shops - oh, and all the big beautiful churches dotted around town? Open for mass, but promptly lock their doors the moment the last person exits through them! Needless to say, combined with the eventual rain - because in Faro, it seems you can expect rain just about every day this time of year - it made for a rather slow, rather lazy Sunday. I suppose even when you're traveling, you need some downtime every once in a while, to be able to keep going full-speed for the rest of the trip, but we tend to hit those on travel days, so it felt more like just a waste of a good day to us.
Thankfully, we had finally made contact with a car rental agency who was open, and willing to lend us a car for our upcoming trip to Sagres, so the morning consisted of finding the office, to make sure it was real, and not just someone's apartment. With that mission complete, we proceeded to wander about Faro, with the idea that we would discover some hidden gems. We headed quite far up one boulevard to the chapel of Saint-Anthony, where so many people were attending mass that they were spilling out the main door. A small, crackly speaker sat on a chair, broadcasting the priest's sermon to the surrounding patrons, as well as the rest of the park. Not wanting to intrude, we instead crossed to the west side of town, where the municipal market was located.
Surprisingly, a smattering of vendors inside had spread out their wares for the few shoppers present. We strolled past counters of glistening fish and sloppy piles of octopi, their tentacles knotted together. We strolled past farmers showcasing their vegetables, leafy green cabbages, clean white turnips and bright orange carrots next to bags of potatoes and onions. We strolled past a bakery offering Bolo Rei, or King's cake, covered in a generous layer of almonds and walnuts, and dusted in powdered sugar. We bought 2 crisp-fried Alentejo-style pastries, covered in cinnamon sugar and deliciously crunchy, and we devoured them on a bench outside, watching the dark clouds swirling overhead.
Further in town, we came upon the chapel of Nossa Senhora do Carmo & Capela dos Ossos, where mass had already finished, the doors locked, and not even the bone chapel located around back was open! However, a little neighborhood farmer's market was set up in the piazza out front, and so we explored the stalls here, too, picking up a big bag of dried figs to snack on. We headed back in the direction of the walled town.

At this point, the drizzle had started, and it seemed inevitable that ALL of the churches in town were closed, as we approached the Se(cathedral) in the center of the old town, only to be met with a locked gate. so we aborted mission, instead taking a page from the book of those who live here - we went back to the apartment for lunch and a siesta, watching the rain fall outside the window, and hoping it would let up sometime soon.

Intermission - where I browsed the internet and worked on my blog, while Mario watched the BBC and napped.
The evening went pretty much the same way the morning did. We insisted on getting out for a walk at the very least - lingered along the Faro Marina, watching the tide come in and the birds flying around the lagoon. We returned once again inside the walled city, and discovered a corner we had not previously explored. A row of flowering vines hid the entrance to a workshop that looked like it had been there for centuries, where an old man worked diligently on a wooden frame for an even older set of Azulejos - the painted blue tiles synonymous with Portugal. Around him, more tiles, some chipped, some broken, lay collected in all manners of boxes, while complete sets where laid carefully on boards, exhibiting their beautiful art for us to see. Orphaned tiles - the results of botched renovations or having long ago lost their sets, were accumulated in boxes in the floor, the perfect souvenir for someone without an entire wall to adorn. We picked out a piece to bring home, a white tile with a solitary blue flower on it, having been saved from destruction in Lisbon, and dating back to the time of the Pombaline reconstruction after the great earthquake in 1755. A hand-written certificate on a little slip of paper, signed by the old man in the middle of his cluttered workbench, certifies its authenticity. How fun the discoveries you can make when there is nothing else to do!