Country Article / Postcards

Dining Alone in Portugal

Date: 01/02/2007

Faro is very quiet. Everything stops at five. Café owners fetch the tables inside and lock up for the night. Traffic peters out. The light fades and the streets--lively with routine in the daytime--suddenly drain. It’s not like Barcelona or Milan or even Lisbon; pretty as a picture it may be, but it is a working town, and the working folk go home to spend the evening with their families. They don’t come out again. Only a handful of bewildered tourists are left to roam the eerily deserted streets and squares, where disconsolate waiters stand outside the few open restaurants like bored prostitutes.

I suddenly realize with a sense of flushing panic that the waiter is speaking to me. I speak a little bit of French and Spanish--hardly anything, but enough to feed and water myself--but Portuguese is a language of which I know precisely zero words. It sounds a bit like Spanish but it’s not; they don’t understand me when I speak my terrible Spanish, and for the first time in my life it is not simply because my Spanish is terrible. I may as well be speaking English or Dutch or Double Dutch, as he seems to be speaking now.

The waiter sees the alarm on my face and smiles. “English, yes?”

I sigh with relief, and then make a helpless gesture at the menu. I don’t understand any of it and I’m wary of being experimental and daring. Once in Madrid, I was experimental and daring and ended up with a large plate of steaming intestines. And that was dessert; the starter and the main course I had to catch myself.

“You want beefy meat, yes?”

“Yes, beefy meat would be fine.” I said gratefully.

“And enormous beer?” He laughed knowingly.

“Thanks, that sounds great,” I said.

He smiles back. “And a woman?”

“No thanks. Maybe just a few seasonal vegetables.”

“Your woman?” he says, indicating the empty space beside me.

“Oh, I see. No, I’m travelling alone.”

“I get woman,” he says decisively. “I get woman to sit on you.”

In a manner of speaking, that’s exactly what he did. In fact she was his niece, a biology student down on a visit from Lisbon. She appeared totally unfazed at being pimped out as a dinner companion. I asked her if Faro was always this quiet. She considered for a moment, and then shrugged. “I don’t live here,” she said. “I’m just visiting from Lisbon. Do you not take notes?”

I headed back to the hotel to watch television alone, strangely pleased with the evening. Faro can be much busier in high season, when millions of tourists pass through on their way to the popular Algarve resorts, but if you are happy to restrict your main activity to the daytimes, and then spend peaceful evenings being fussed over by kindly locals, it can also be a terrific destination for a winter break. Dining companions are of course at the owner’s discretion.

Gary James
For International Living