Faro is the Algarve capital most visitors only see from the airport bus, and it is also its cheapest base. The walled Cidade Velha costs nothing to walk, the market coffee is €0.80, and the barrier islands are a €4.60 public ferry away.
Faro's palm-lined waterfront garden sits between the marina and the city walls, with a bandstand, free municipal wifi and benches facing the Ria Formosa. Open 24 hours, no gate and no ticket — the cheapest breakfast spot in town.
The 13th-century gate in the Moorish wall where legend places Afonso III resting after the 1249 siege. The whole rampart circuit — Arco do Repouso, Largo de São Francisco, the lanes behind the Sé — is open street, free at any hour.
Behind the twin-towered Carmo church, a chapel lined with 1,245 monks' skulls and bones exhumed from the friars' cemetery in 1816. The church itself is free to enter; the bone chapel costs €2, open Monday to Friday 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-17:00.
A 1355 hermitage on Faro's highest rise, roughly 20 metres above the flats. The outside stair gives a free 360-degree sweep over the lagoon, the salt pans and the airport runway, with none of the queue for the cathedral tower.
The 2008 glass-and-steel rebuild of Faro's 1860 market hall. Ground floor is fish and produce — sardines around €4 a kilo, oranges near €1; the upper gallery cafés serve a bica and a pastry for under €2. Monday to Saturday, 07:00-15:00.
Long communal tables, wine barrels stacked to the ceiling and paper tablecloths since 1972, a two-minute walk from the train station. Grilled mackerel, feijoada or pork with clams run €8-12, house wine €1.50 a glass, and no reservations are taken.
Faro's 1946 pastry counter on the pedestrian Rua de Santo António. Pastel de nata €1.20, the local Dom Rodrigo almond-and-egg sweet around €1.50, coffee €0.80 taken standing at the marble bar — the Algarve price, not the seafront one.
Built into the old town's sea wall, with a terrace hanging directly over the Ria Formosa mudflats. Draft Super Bock runs about €2.50 and the sunset over the lagoon costs nothing on top of it. Walk in through Arco da Porta Nova.
The municipal ferry to Culatra and Farol leaves the pier directly below the city walls. A return ticket costs about €4.60 — roughly a fifth of a lagoon cruise, crossing the same water past the same flamingo flats and oyster beds.
The barrier-island hamlet under the 1851 Cabo de Santa Maria lighthouse: sand streets, no cars, one row of fishermen's houses and an Atlantic beach that stays near-empty outside August. Both the village and the sand cost nothing.
Six kilometres of Atlantic sand on the sandspit past the airport, reached by Próximo bus 16 from the bus station in about 20 minutes for €2.35 each way. Access and showers are free; beachfront bars charge around €3 for a toast.
A free boardwalk and dirt path east of the centre running out over the salt pans on the old Faro-Olhão shoreline. Low tide near sunset brings flamingos, spoonbills and fiddler crabs within a few metres of the rail. Dawn to dusk.