A last look at the island of Sao Jorge Azores brings us to the city of Valas. At just a little over 5000 people its actually more like a small town really.
Valas is located on the South Western part of the island on the water and on the largest fajã of the island. If you didn't read any of my previous posts about the Azores fajãs (that's okay, you're forgiven) they are basically flat land plateaus created by volcanic activity - lava flows and landslides.
Valas city was one of the first to be settled when people arrived on the island and it dates all the way back to the 1400s.
It hosts the island's marine port and its where we took a ferry across the sea to our next destination of our trip, the island of Faial. I ended up getting massively sea sick on that ferry ride by the way. It hit me almost immediately when the ship set sail and didn't subside until we docked at our destination an hour and a half later. There were a bunch of people in a similar situation as me too. Staff were handing out sea sickness bags to many people who nauseated like me. My wife told me that people were puking in bags behind her in their seats inside but she couldn't leave because she had our bags and I was outside on the deck also puking.
On top of all that and prior to our departure, our ferry was delayed quite a bit that morning, by well over an hour. We were supposed to arrive in Faial around 12:30-1:00pm but instead we got there sometime after 3:00pm. With both unpleasantries, it was a pretty poor ferry ride experience overall, to say the least.
Anyway, back to valas. There wasn't a whole lot to the town except a nice little park square with a gazebo.
It was painted in bright colors with a bold red that really popped. I feel like you don't see things painted red like that very often.
The buildings were painted bright white and the charcoal grey and tan cobblestone streets added a lot of character to the location.
That style of cobblestone work seemed to be a common feature of the islands of the Azores.
The main church of the town was located in another plaza square closer to the water.
It wasn't built in an ornate or overly interesting architectural style, but it did have some unique character in its pristine white facade and black stone masonry.
That plaza also had a dragon statue that appeared to be climbing out of a small pool of water. In another post I wrote about the Sao Jorge island I mentioned that some people believe that it looks like a sleeping dragon. My guess is that the statue is a nod to that.
We noticed some restaurants in town but none were open at the time of day that we were there and our hotel was too far away for us to dine there in the evenings. We did have a few pastries at a couple different bakery's though and they were all pretty decent.
Overall Valas wasn't an amazing destination by any means. Its not a site that I would go out of my way to visit. But there was food there and it had some small town charm about it, so at the very least it was nice walking around a little while waiting for the l ferry to take us to another island.
