There is a story waiting to unfold around every corner at Fontainhas, the Latin quarter of Panjim. The first story I discovered was that of an old Portuguese-styled home that was turned into a bed and breakfast by local realtor Roy Botelho. In under a year, Roy’s ‘Hospedaria Abrigo de Botelho’ was ranked number one on Tripadvisor. Antiques in every room, painted tiles in the bathrooms, an old wooden staircase, creaky fans on the ceiling… the B&B proved to be my first taste of everything quaint that the Quarter has in its folds.
Fontainhas is a sparkling example of heritage conservation in the heart of a capital, where the past flirts freely with the present; where the colours on the villas’ facades — green, yellow, blue and red — mingle playfully with the colours of flowers in the potted plants that dot every home; where the narrow lanes are so quiet that I felt as if I had in fact travelled back in time or to a Portuguese countryside.
The place has a lot on offer for heritage aficionados as well as photographers. Stroll around this picturesque part of town and take in the old-worldly streets and the lovely homes or walk into one of the galleries and cafés and watch time pass you by. At these galleries I found beautiful handmade tiles — in trademark blue and white (you can even personalise them with your own names); tiles with patterns that seem to have leapt out of Fontainhas’ streets only to be caught in small squares so you can take a piece of your vacation back home with you, and many others with the hilarious and sublime cartoons of Mario Miranda. And don’t be surprised, at the end of a long day, if you find yourself eating xacuttis, stuffed pappadam and bhindi butter fry at Viva Panjim — a charming little restaurant with all things vintage — that is open well after the rest of the Latin Quarter goes to sleep. What’s more? After a hearty meal and a drink or two your smile is sure to widen when you take look at the bill. Even the prices at this restaurant reminded me of the days gone by.
Cast iron railings and windows, chapels and churches, high ceilings and cool tiles…if architecture is what interests you then Fontainhas has something for you too. And if you are lucky, you may also chance upon sights that are ever so delightful and unique to the place. On my walks I saw an old woman in a soft yellow gown knitting in her verandah with a koel’s call for company, a man in his fifties learning to play the violin by a beautiful blue window which created a perfect frame, a fat white cat napping on a wall, lost but happy tourists with maps and bulky DSLR cameras figuring out where to go next, school girls in smart uniforms sitting on the bylanes and sketching old buildings, couples, old and young, walking hand in hand, cafes playing soft yet contemporary music, bauhinia trees and twinkly lights that come on at twilight…
Fontainhas is where even ‘non-nappers’ like yours truly couldn’t resist the temptation of a siesta, even if it meant just sitting under a fan on a rocking chair in a balcony. It is the sort of place that Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes in his Love in the Time of Cholera where “weeds hung from the balconies and opened cracks in the whitewashed walls of even the best-kept mansions, and the only signs of life at two o'clock in the afternoon were languid piano exercises played in the dim light of siesta” and where Dr. Juvenal Urbino nods off on the terrace of his patio “hearing in his sleep the songs of the servant girls under the leaves of the mango trees, the cries of vendors on the street, the uproar of oil and motors from the bay whose exhaust fumes fluttered through the house on hot afternoons…”
