studentsineurope

Grilled fish and ukeleles: One day in Faro

It takes a lot to get me to wake up at 7:00am on a Saturday morning, but this time, the prospect of hopping on a bus to an unfamiliar Portuguese city for an unplanned, 24-hour trip was more alluring than the snooze button.

Seafood lovers will relish Faro's abundance of good, inexpensive fish.

White-walled, palm tree-lined Faro sits about an hour from the Spanish border in the south of Portugual, tucked away from the wide-open Atlantic by a thin strip of land.  Like many southern European cities, its tourist season peaks in the summer with an annual invasion of Britons and other travelers from the north. In November, however, it’s a quiet, restful place still blessed by mild weather and clear skies.

After meeting friends who had arrived the day before, we set out into the streets in leisurely pursuit of a meal.  The streets were mostly deserted (almost eerily so), but the restaurant for which they had received a recommendation was in full swing only shortly after opening its doors.  We took a seat outside, surrounded by mostly Portuguese families and listened to the gently swishing sounds of their pretty language as we waited to order.  No menus were handed out.  The choices were few, and literally laid out in front of us next to the grill: a selection of several different kinds of whole fish and calamari.  The language barrier prevented any thorough explanation of what we were about to eat, but point-and-choose worked well enough and within seconds there was a heap of seafood crackling delectably over the open flame.

We had heard good things about Portuguese cuisine and the experience confirmed our elevated expectations.  Everything – the simple salad of tomatoes and cucumbers, the grilled baby potatoes, and of course the main dish – was mouth-wateringly fresh, as if it had all been pulled from the sea, or from the garden, that morning.  Until then, I had never been served an entire fish (head, scales, bones, and all) but it was delicious to be anything but completely palatable.

For dinner, we popped in to a similar, family-run place with a welcoming fireplace grill and the tempting scent of roast meat.  The food there was equally fresh and exquisite in its simplicity, and we ate to excess (shared entrees, salad, potatoes, red wine, and dessert all for 12 euros.)

Afterward, full and happy, we stepped into the quiet night.  The streets were still devoid of people and I was starting to doubt Faro’s reputation as a party town.  A chilly air had displaced the warmth of the day and a light rain began to fell.  We sought refuge in a little bar where the volume of the music was way out of proportion to the level of activity inside.  After a couple beers and some goofy photos, we ventured out again, walking more or less aimlessly in the hope of finding some sort of party.  Then, from a balcony above, a couple German kids – as drunk as they were amiable – called out to us.  Within a minute we were in their room, sharing unchilled cans of cheap Portuguese beer and popping corks off bottles of cider.  I sat on the balcony, held my hand out to the falling rain, and watched as the activity outside slowly picked up and groups of young Faro kids dressed for Saturday night ambled down the narrow streets.

Evidently, most of Faro’s nightlife – rather rowdy, it turns out, even in the off-season – is hidden away on one or two streets in the center of town.  A series of and more or less identical clubs with names like “Sound” or “Millennium III” are clustered in one long, narrow stretch of loudness and debauchery.  I don’t know where everyone was hiding during the day, but the city suddenly came alive after dark.

The next hours went by in a blur of low-priced beer and European house music.  My friends – recently reunited, long-distance lovers, in fact – slipped off to be alone, and not long after, my new-found German friends departed to tend to the drunkest member of their group.  In the end, I found myself dancing with some crazy Brazilians (there’s a sizable Brazilian community in Faro) to an impassioned three-piece ukulele-led pop band in a tiny bar I could never find my way back to if I tried.

And the next morning, Faro lapsed into its balmy languor once again.  Warm weather, silent streets, and the slightest trace of sea air.  We missed the bus back home, tried and failed utterly to hitchhike, and took a nap in a patch of grass near the center.  To fall asleep and wake up like that is a simple pleasure worth savoring.  Faro in November takes it easy.