Destination #23 - Faro, Portugal

I had been excited about this part of the trip for a while now as my friends, Kalina and Jeff from Vancouver, and I had planned to meet up as they're travelling across Europe as well.

It was only a short bus ride this time as I made my way over to Faro in Portugal. I had never heard of this place before planning this trip. I don't think it is well known, other than the British who I think use this as a vacation spot. Faro is part of what's called the Algarve region in Portugal, mainly known for these beautiful sandstone cliffs and beaches. Faro is the centre of it all, but actually doesn't really possess these cliffs, which is what I had wanted to see. These are more so in Lagos. I can't complain though, it still had the beaches and I finally had some friends to talk to and share experiences with.

I had gotten to the hostel first before Kalina and Jeff to find nobody answering the door. As I waited outside the door, I heard a familiar voice behind me saying "What's the name of the hostel again?". I turned to find Kalina and Jeff concentrating on pulling out their phones when I yelled "Jeffrayyyyyy!" (inside joke). We group hugged and all was well in the world!!! We assumed the hostel wasn't going to open until 11am so we sat at a nearby cafe and had some breakfast. It is worthy to note that I was taken aback at how good the coffee was. Living in London, all my Aussie friends seem to go on about how difficult it is to find good coffee in London. I never found the difference until I had a taste of this Portuguese coffee. Sorry Aussie friends.

After breakfast, we were finally able to enter the hostel. We had our own 3 bed private room that strangely enough had a honeymoon sign on the door and yay, no bunk beds. The hostel was owned and run by one guy named Jorge and the guy was a beauty! Despite him never being at reception, he was a cool guy and he answered our questions when we would eventually see him. It was a small hostel and had a funky, homely vibe to it.

As mentioned before, this was more so a vacation spot so there actually wasn't a whole lot to see or do except go to the beach. We did just that and went to the more popular one near the airport. It was so nice to finally relax in some hot sun and clear blue sky, while catching up with Kalina and Jeff.

That night, we shared the same difficulty of finding a restaurant like I did in Seville. To my surprise, a lot of the restaurants were quite pricey for somewhere that I didn't think was well known and to be honest, there wasn't a whole lot of tourists there! We did finally find a cool tapas place and enjoyed some sangria and of course, tapas. We then went to this awesome cocktail place which actually seemed to be the only lively place in Faro that night. Their menu was designed like a newspaper and had a million choices so it was difficult to settle on one. Jeff and I got this amazing one that was basically Autumn in a glass. It had whiskey, pumpkin jelly, cinnamon syrup, lemon juice, and apple beer. So good! Afterwards, we grabbed some wine and sat up on the terrace of the hostel with Jorge.

The next day, we took a boat over to a desert island called Ilha Deserta, part of the Parque Natural da Ria Formosa. I thought it was "deserted" but I got corrected by Kalina and Jeff. There was a lot less people here than the day before and we couldn't have asked for a better day. It was hot and blue skies again but we had to be careful as there was wind so it provided us with a decent temperature, but we knew the UV wouldn't be so kind. The island had this really cool tree thingy that had signs pointing to major cities with the distances on them as we were on the Southernmost part of Portugal.

After having such a difficult and exhausting day ;) we headed back to the hostel and got ready for dinner. This time, we were able to ask Jorge for some restaurant recommendations even though we didn't end up taking it. We found another cool tapas place and of course, we got sangria and tapas. One of the tapas was chorizo sausage and it was cooked on an open flame at our table. It was delicious. Afterwards, we went to a bar and grabbed a few beers before settling down for the night.

Faro was a good destination spot for relaxing. However, if I visit the Algarve region again, it will probably be Lagos I go to.

Next;
Lisbon
Porto
Marseille
Nice
Turkey
Rhodes