Thursday in Tavira

After yesterday’s rain and generally overcast weather we woke up to bright sunshine, a good day for a drive.

We picked up our car from the public car park where it had been parked for the last four days and headed north to Faro. This is the capital of the region and has a long history, as does everywhere here I might add.

After parking the car out of town we headed in to the Old Town. We had been alerted by Carla that today was a public holiday. She said it was a Bank Holiday, but we think it was more to do with All Saints' Day, an important day in the Catholic calendar. Whatever, every church we went to was closed, and the main museum in Faro was also closed.

We walked around, looked at was to be seen, had a coffee and then headed out of the Old Town to the more modern area. One thing we wanted to see was Igreja do Carmo / Capela dos Ossos, or the Carmo Church / Chapel of Bones. It was closed because of All Saints' Day. While we could hear an organist rehearsing we were told that there would be nothing on until 9pm on Friday evening, so sadly we didn’t get to see all the bones of the old monks.

After leaving the Chapel of Bones, we meandered around to the local cemetery. What was really, really interesting was (a) the number of people there, and (b) the recent headstones. It appears that they “recycle” their grave sites, because we saw a whole section in this old cemetery with headstones from 2013 to 2017. Their family mausoleums were interesting too. We saw one that was open, being tendered to by an older couple. We could see four normal sized coffins and two little ones. How sad! It seems that on All Saints' Day, people go to cemeteries to put flowers on their loved ones' graves, clean the headstones, etc. We saw this at two other places as well.

Then it was back to Tavira where we didn’t do a great deal until we went out for a drink before dinner. The bar was almost empty but those who were there were from England. There is something funny about being in a Portuguese bar listening to Elton John and Poms!Read more