Monchique guide
Today we’ll be undertaking a quick Monchique guide so that we can bring to the forefront this ideal day-visit location.
Monchique is located in the western Algarve and a great place to visit if you want to take a break from the beaches. With a car rental you can easily drive on the main road up to Monchique and you can just feel the adventure ahead thanks to the eucalyptus trees and yellow flowering mimosas lining the road.
You’ll find a bunch of local pottery shops, cafes and local restaurants lining the road, all of which more than willing to accept your patronage. Actually one of the most popular pastimes is to take a seat at one such restaurant and dig into some chicken piri-piri.
Once you reach the centre of Monchique you’ll find a revamped square with a restored nora – well – which features tin buckets meant to fill up a water tank, now functioning as a water feature. In the past, the nora was donkey-driven to pull up water from the well for as long as 10 hours a day.
As you might’ve noticed already all over the Algarve, the town square is a great place to find a couple of restaurants.
Walking around the place you’ll find bronze lifelike figures of adults and children as well as a working public laundry – the very manual, very labour-intensive type of public laundry – still used by the locals to was and scrub their clothes.
The main church features some wonderfully elaborate Manueline carvings on the exterior door and also in a religious vein, looking up into the hillside you can see the ruin of a 17th century Franciscan monastery.
For the more alcohol-inclined visitor, you should try the local clear spirit called ‘Medronho’, similar to schnapps it is made by distilling the red strawberry-like fruit of the arbtutus tree/bush, it’s a strong and very acquired taste.
