Tavira
I hope you like churches.
The churches in Portugal have a very interesting feature - they have many displays etched/painted onto tiles. Much of Portuguese history can be learned from the depictions on these tiles.
Luckily for you, I am here to translate the images and artworks for you.
We are still on the Algarve coast, but today we're looking at the Eastern end of it - one of the main towns is a place called Tavira.
This first photo provides you with an every-day looking church in Tavira. The common features are an arched entrance with large wooden doors, a few sad people depicted, usually with their head leaning slightly to their left.
Then there are the obligatory hangers-on on the side.
Notice that the doors are shut - It's lunch time. No problems, time for bica and cake.
Inside this church has quite a number of the blue tiled stories. Here's my co-photographer Ruth - she is quite taken by the tiles of Portugal.
Here's a closer up view of a few scenes.
I did some research, and well, you know how I'm on the mission to play table tennis throughout my journey, well, apparently Tavira is one of the first places in the world that this game was played although it was somewhat different back in the 15th century when this church was built.
The next photo shows the clergyman on the left teaching the early form of table tennis to the children of the village. The table tennis bat was designed a little differently to what we know today - you can see it has a longer handle than the current bat design. I hope you can see it all clearly enough.
You can see the table-tennis table in the next photo, but the player caused a real stir with the officials
when he disagreed with the ref, and so jumped up on the table itself and wouldn't get off until his pleading to replay the point was agreed.
You can see the player's opponent kneeling down aghast at the unsportsmanlike behaviour.
The English translation of the title of this scene "Consolarostristes" is "without goodwill, the sun will not rise". The modern-day interpretation draws out the need for table tennis players to accept the rules of the game, and not jump onto the court in a tantrum.
Moving along to the next historical piece we see the King Pedro looking concerned while holding his new born prince.
Legend tells us that this King was quite perturbed that his son was so blonde, when his whole family were all brunettes. His Queen Ines, a stunning brunette, was called to explain.
The church leader gave an emotional sermon - more like fire and brimstone really. This next photo captures the emotion from the orator in the back, the sad Queen on the left, and on the right is a monk to give the appearance of balance.
To the rescue comes Mary - her head nicely tilted to her left to give that caring disposition. Her hands tell the story don't they.
Mary teaches us that "There are a lot of more important things in life to worry about than mortal yearnings of the flesh". And "you win some and you lose some - just make the best of with what you are dealt" she teaches.
Unfortunately I couldn't find the description for the next piece - it was a bit dark for me though - what do you think?
Outside the church they were promoting a Fado concert.
If you haven't heard the Fado, well, you have missed something special.
Look how popular it is:
Notice that Ruth has found another bloke to go with. I was fine with that - In my view, the Fado is incessant whinging set to music. No way I was sitting through that thank you very much.
No... I found something much more interesting that piqued my interest - more scientific and less about feelings. The trouble with these churchy exhibits is I get the feeling they don't like the way I live my life... here to enjoy the moment. Sometimes its about working towards enjoying the moment later on too, but I think the church exhibits are trying to make me feel guilty for all the happiness I have experienced.
Anyway... check this out. What do you think it is?
Yes a hole... well done Einstein!
But, where is the hole? And why is it interesting to Julian?
Well... I'll tell you seeing you are going to all the effort of reading my blog.
This hole is drilled into the roof of a water tower located at the highest point of Tavira. The water tower is no longer required for water - they have a reasonable supply and a modern sewerage system here now.
So, given that one of the biggest industries in town is tourism, a British engineer, Neil Buckton, offered to create a tourist magnet by putting a few mirrors and lenses on top of the tower, and reflecting the light in through the hole into the inners of the water tower and onto a convex white sheet that could be raised up and down.
The end result is that you go inside the water tower and you can see the whole town and environs projected onto the screen... see here:
Yes... that's my photo of the projection.
Neat hey?
Quite simple and effective. And they have built up a little comical routine which I won't describe here - suffice to say it's very well done, and certainly is a huge improvement on the Fado and church sights.
Back to my favourite subject. The Bouganvillias were out:
My beautiful flower and I wandered the streets of Tavira.
We're now getting used to the architecture as can be seen from a rampart of Tavira's castle.
Walking along we stumbled across an archaelogical digging uncovering an abode from 10th Century BC.
A little further down the street was a house with an interesting depiction on its letter box. Clearly the male belongs here.
A little further on we had a nice view of Tavira's Roman Bridge.
And with all this touring, we stopped for a late lunch at Pessoa's Cafe. We shared a goats cheese salad and an avocado and cucumber bruschetta. Hit the spot nicely indeed.
Here's Ruth miffed that I had left her with the account.
It's quite common for these cafes to only have a few tables - I suppose the buildings are all quite small - a reflection that times are not as affluent as they would wish.
While there, I noticed we actually had a view of all the main sightseeing sights, so I took the photo to remind you of them:
From the left you see the castle, church, clock tower, water tower, and in the foreground on the right is the Roman bridge.
Bye bye Tavira.
From Tavira, we drove down to the beach - to a place called Praia do Barril.
Now this was interesting (he says hoping you'll agree with me!)
Here's a grave yard of anchors on the beach:
Now this is no nonsense - sorry for the nonsense up above, but I suppose I got a little bored with the churches.
This area had a thriving fishing community - especially for tuna.
The fishermen became quite adept at bring home the tuna - they decided to install a sophisticated set of nets which allowed the tuna to come into the area, and on the signal, the fishermen would close up the nets and haul in vast numbers of tuna until the day came when there were no longer any.
They fished the place out.
Completely.
So the workers dug up all the anchors that were used to hold down the nets and created the grave yard you see.
It is quite sombre and a good lesson for us all - these resources are not infinite.
The place is now a gorgeous white sand beach... you can imagine its popularity in the summer:
Sun lounges on the beach in front of a reminder about looking after our precious world and all who live within it.
And just in case you needed any help in feeling guilty about eating tuna...
A church within which you can reflect on the world's ills, and seek forgiveness from whatever comes next for you.
Could that be up above in the heavens?
Apart from the church and other man-made icons, this area is very scenic - there's an estuary:
And from another angle:
They have some funny trees here though:
While there, Ruth needed to call home, but these days, all that's left in the public telephone box is the connecting cable. Maybe it's a BYO telephone service here now.
Whatever, Ruth had to defer to her iPhone to call home.
I'll call it quits for today - Hope you enjoyed my blog, and if I have offended anyone...
Get a life!
The churches in Portugal have a very interesting feature - they have many displays etched/painted onto tiles. Much of Portuguese history can be learned from the depictions on these tiles.
Luckily for you, I am here to translate the images and artworks for you.
We are still on the Algarve coast, but today we're looking at the Eastern end of it - one of the main towns is a place called Tavira.
This first photo provides you with an every-day looking church in Tavira. The common features are an arched entrance with large wooden doors, a few sad people depicted, usually with their head leaning slightly to their left.
Then there are the obligatory hangers-on on the side.
Notice that the doors are shut - It's lunch time. No problems, time for bica and cake.
Inside this church has quite a number of the blue tiled stories. Here's my co-photographer Ruth - she is quite taken by the tiles of Portugal.
Here's a closer up view of a few scenes.
I did some research, and well, you know how I'm on the mission to play table tennis throughout my journey, well, apparently Tavira is one of the first places in the world that this game was played although it was somewhat different back in the 15th century when this church was built.
The next photo shows the clergyman on the left teaching the early form of table tennis to the children of the village. The table tennis bat was designed a little differently to what we know today - you can see it has a longer handle than the current bat design. I hope you can see it all clearly enough.
You can see the table-tennis table in the next photo, but the player caused a real stir with the officials
when he disagreed with the ref, and so jumped up on the table itself and wouldn't get off until his pleading to replay the point was agreed.
You can see the player's opponent kneeling down aghast at the unsportsmanlike behaviour.
The English translation of the title of this scene "Consolarostristes" is "without goodwill, the sun will not rise". The modern-day interpretation draws out the need for table tennis players to accept the rules of the game, and not jump onto the court in a tantrum.
Moving along to the next historical piece we see the King Pedro looking concerned while holding his new born prince.
Legend tells us that this King was quite perturbed that his son was so blonde, when his whole family were all brunettes. His Queen Ines, a stunning brunette, was called to explain.
The church leader gave an emotional sermon - more like fire and brimstone really. This next photo captures the emotion from the orator in the back, the sad Queen on the left, and on the right is a monk to give the appearance of balance.
To the rescue comes Mary - her head nicely tilted to her left to give that caring disposition. Her hands tell the story don't they.
Mary teaches us that "There are a lot of more important things in life to worry about than mortal yearnings of the flesh". And "you win some and you lose some - just make the best of with what you are dealt" she teaches.
Unfortunately I couldn't find the description for the next piece - it was a bit dark for me though - what do you think?
Outside the church they were promoting a Fado concert.
If you haven't heard the Fado, well, you have missed something special.
Look how popular it is:
Notice that Ruth has found another bloke to go with. I was fine with that - In my view, the Fado is incessant whinging set to music. No way I was sitting through that thank you very much.
No... I found something much more interesting that piqued my interest - more scientific and less about feelings. The trouble with these churchy exhibits is I get the feeling they don't like the way I live my life... here to enjoy the moment. Sometimes its about working towards enjoying the moment later on too, but I think the church exhibits are trying to make me feel guilty for all the happiness I have experienced.
Anyway... check this out. What do you think it is?
Yes a hole... well done Einstein!
But, where is the hole? And why is it interesting to Julian?
Well... I'll tell you seeing you are going to all the effort of reading my blog.
This hole is drilled into the roof of a water tower located at the highest point of Tavira. The water tower is no longer required for water - they have a reasonable supply and a modern sewerage system here now.
So, given that one of the biggest industries in town is tourism, a British engineer, Neil Buckton, offered to create a tourist magnet by putting a few mirrors and lenses on top of the tower, and reflecting the light in through the hole into the inners of the water tower and onto a convex white sheet that could be raised up and down.
The end result is that you go inside the water tower and you can see the whole town and environs projected onto the screen... see here:
Yes... that's my photo of the projection.
Neat hey?
Quite simple and effective. And they have built up a little comical routine which I won't describe here - suffice to say it's very well done, and certainly is a huge improvement on the Fado and church sights.
Back to my favourite subject. The Bouganvillias were out:
My beautiful flower and I wandered the streets of Tavira.
We're now getting used to the architecture as can be seen from a rampart of Tavira's castle.
Walking along we stumbled across an archaelogical digging uncovering an abode from 10th Century BC.
A little further down the street was a house with an interesting depiction on its letter box. Clearly the male belongs here.
A little further on we had a nice view of Tavira's Roman Bridge.
And with all this touring, we stopped for a late lunch at Pessoa's Cafe. We shared a goats cheese salad and an avocado and cucumber bruschetta. Hit the spot nicely indeed.
Here's Ruth miffed that I had left her with the account.
It's quite common for these cafes to only have a few tables - I suppose the buildings are all quite small - a reflection that times are not as affluent as they would wish.
While there, I noticed we actually had a view of all the main sightseeing sights, so I took the photo to remind you of them:
From the left you see the castle, church, clock tower, water tower, and in the foreground on the right is the Roman bridge.
Bye bye Tavira.
From Tavira, we drove down to the beach - to a place called Praia do Barril.
Now this was interesting (he says hoping you'll agree with me!)
Here's a grave yard of anchors on the beach:
Now this is no nonsense - sorry for the nonsense up above, but I suppose I got a little bored with the churches.
This area had a thriving fishing community - especially for tuna.
The fishermen became quite adept at bring home the tuna - they decided to install a sophisticated set of nets which allowed the tuna to come into the area, and on the signal, the fishermen would close up the nets and haul in vast numbers of tuna until the day came when there were no longer any.
They fished the place out.
Completely.
So the workers dug up all the anchors that were used to hold down the nets and created the grave yard you see.
It is quite sombre and a good lesson for us all - these resources are not infinite.
The place is now a gorgeous white sand beach... you can imagine its popularity in the summer:
Sun lounges on the beach in front of a reminder about looking after our precious world and all who live within it.
And just in case you needed any help in feeling guilty about eating tuna...
A church within which you can reflect on the world's ills, and seek forgiveness from whatever comes next for you.
Could that be up above in the heavens?
Apart from the church and other man-made icons, this area is very scenic - there's an estuary:
And from another angle:
They have some funny trees here though:
While there, Ruth needed to call home, but these days, all that's left in the public telephone box is the connecting cable. Maybe it's a BYO telephone service here now.
Whatever, Ruth had to defer to her iPhone to call home.
I'll call it quits for today - Hope you enjoyed my blog, and if I have offended anyone...
Get a life!
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