Today's Lessons!

I headed East again today to take in another spectacular church and to see the city of Faro.  The Church of São Lourenço is in Almancil, a suburb of Faro, where there's not a whole lot else.  But that church is, like the church in Loule (pronounced Loo - lay, I learned today) that I saw over the weekend, tiled everywhere and has a gorgeous altarpiece.  Photographs inside are forbidden (I think they want to sell the faded postcards on the racks when you walk in to pay your 2 euros to enter, plus 50 eurocents for a guide pamphlet) but the tiles tell the story of Saint Lawrence of Rome.  He gave the emperor's wealth to the poor but was accused of keeping it himself, and in spite of his good deeds (in addition to giving to the poor, he restored sight to blind men), he was punished by being roasted on a griddle.  Which is told in beautifully painted blue and white tiles from the 1700s.

It was a short drive from there to Faro.  Faro has the airport in the Algarve and a huge soccer stadium and on the drive in, I passed Ikea, a Jeep dealership, McDonald's, you get the idea.  It's a real city with a historic center so you get all that American stuff with your history.  Fortunately, there's some great things to see in Faro.  After parking near the marina, I walked through the historic archway that's on the site of the old old Moorish entrance to the city.  This one was built in 1812.

On the way to the arch, I passed a large plaque in Portuguese and English commemorating Christopher Columbus passing through Faro in 1493.  It also explains that his last name wasn't Columbus, it was Colon and he wasn't Italian, he was Portuguese.  Did everyone know this and I'm the last to know?

Up a cobbled street from the arch is the Bishop's Palace and the Faro Cathedral.  One ticket gets you both, plus the Faro Bone Church.  Let me just tell you now -- it was a disappointing Bone Church, really a small wall in an outdoor chapel and the weather had really done a lot of damage to it.

The Bishop's Palace is decorated with beautiful tiles along wall after wall in the rooms they open to the public.  Completely gorgeous and I could look at them all day.

Finally, I went to the Faro Cathedral.  And there were babies (cherubs or angels, I think is perhaps more precise).  And plenty of other beauty to behold.