Faro has the bad luck of owning the Algarve’s airport, which means most travellers experience it as a baggage carousel and a car-rental queue before fleeing west to the beaches. We did exactly that the first time, years ago. This time we stayed, mostly out of stubbornness, and I am glad we did, because Faro turned out to be one of those quietly rewarding cities that asks nothing of you and gives a great deal back if you bother to look.
Inside the Old Walls
The Cidade Velha, the old town, sits behind honey-coloured walls reached through the Arco da Vila, a neoclassical gateway where white storks have built their ridiculous nests on top of every available chimney and tower. Lia stood under one for ten minutes just watching a stork rearrange twigs with great seriousness. Through the arch the streets go cobbled and quiet, orange trees throwing shade across small squares, until you reach the cathedral square, a wide expanse of pale stone that seems to soak up the heat.
The Sé, the cathedral, is a patchwork — Gothic bones, baroque additions, a tower you can climb for a few euros. From the top the whole geography of Faro snaps into place: the tight grid of the old town, the working port, and beyond it the shining maze of the Ria Formosa. But the thing that stayed with me is darker. At the Igreja do Carmo, a short walk north, there is a Capela dos Ossos — a chapel whose walls and ceiling are entirely lined with the skulls and bones of more than a thousand monks, dug up from the overcrowded cemetery and arranged into grim patterns. An inscription over the door translates roughly to a reminder that you, too, will end up here. I am not religious, but it does focus the mind on a hot afternoon.
Out into the Ria Formosa
The real reason to linger, though, lies offshore. The Ria Formosa is a vast lagoon of salt marsh, channels, and barrier islands stretching along the coast, and from Faro’s waterfront little ferries chug out to islands like Ilha Deserta and Ilha do Farol. We took the slow boat to the Deserta — properly named Ilha da Barreta — which is exactly what it sounds like: a thin spit of sand and dune with a single restaurant and a beach that runs unbroken for kilometres. We walked until the boat and everyone on it were out of sight, ate grilled fish at the lone restaurant with sand still on our feet, and watched flamingos stalk the shallows on the way back.
That evening, back in town, we ate cataplana — the copper clam-and-pork stew the region does so well — at a place where the owner argued cheerfully with us about whether the Algarve or the Alentejo makes it better. He was wrong, but I let him win.
When to go: May, June, or September, when the lagoon is warm, the storks are nesting, and the airport crowds are heading elsewhere. High summer is hot and busy; the shoulder months are Faro at its best.