Algarve towns

The buildings are whitewashed, which sounds simple until you spend time with the variations. Cream plaster, peeling walls showing the stone beneath, a faded pink colonial building with ornate tiles around its windows. Blue trim on doors and window surrounds — not one blue, but several generations of blue paint over blue paint, the older layers showing at the edges where the brushwork got thin. A church facade in white with blue-trimmed bell tower and decorative tilework: the azulejo tradition running from the grand to the municipal, the same instinct for patterned ceramics at every scale.

The Moorish influence is legible in the town structure — narrow alleys between tall buildings, tight corners, a street that offers a glimpse of a church at the far end as a reward for turning the right way. One alley is lined with white and blue-trimmed buildings with flowering vines at the upper levels. The cobblestones are worn smooth. A cream-coloured street between tall buildings with a doorway and that church visible ahead: the Algarve towns were built for pedestrians and foot traffic, and at street level, moving on foot, that's still how they feel.

A red tuk-tuk with a cream canvas roof is parked against a brown wall. Handwritten signs around it. The tuk-tuk is for tourists; the signs are for locals. They coexist without apparent contradiction.

Two fishermen at the waterfront, a colourful beach umbrella between them. Boats moored behind. The harbour at Tavira is still working; the fishing industry is small but present. The men are focused on something in their hands that isn't the camera.

A date palm beside a whitewashed building, its trunk straight, its fronds against the sky.