From my 1875 Murray Handbook for Travellers in Portugal: ‘Algarve is so seldom visited by strangers that the traveller will probably find himself an object of great interest there’.
Not now …
… although in March cafes can feel deserted. Staff keep a hopeful eye out for patrons …
… and that means one’s likely to get morning coffee muito rapidamente.
You can have a castle captured from the Moors in the 13th Century to yourself…
… with wonderful view over town and countryside. This is Aljezur.
Portugal is experiencing depopulation of the countryside. The young are leaving for larger towns and cities …
… and village demographics can skew to the old (Portuguese and wintering expatriates), which away from the coast adds to the out-of-season tranquility ... for lack of a better word.
Bustling it ain’t …
… photogenic it is.
'The common practice is to paint the whole of the outside of the building in a pastel shade ... the slabs of luscious, almost edible colour pleasuring the eye like the rectangles of an abstract painting'.
(Oldest Ally Peter Fryer and Patricia McGowan Pinheiro Dobson Books London 1961)
'The common practice is to paint the whole of the outside of the building in a pastel shade ... the slabs of luscious, almost edible colour pleasuring the eye like the rectangles of an abstract painting'.
(Oldest Ally Peter Fryer and Patricia McGowan Pinheiro Dobson Books London 1961)
Perhaps I should add, yes, the Algarve is photogenic if away from what has been condemned as overdevelopment of the central and eastern coast. In drives along the central motorway leading to the Spanish frontier, one catches distant, depressing glimpses of clustered tourist towers in places such as Portimão.
