THE TELEGRAPH
“There’s something definitively relaxing about a town where the shops don’t open until 3pm because everyone’s gone to the beach for the morning. And that’s every day of the week.
The delicious languor of Trancoso, a former fishing village on Brazil’s Bahia coast, infects you from the start.
But while it has grown more “sophisticated”, and better-known – at least among Brazilians – it has retained its considerable charm.
Along its sides, shaded by huge trees, are brightly coloured houses and numerous artisan stalls, shops and restaurants, all beautiful by day and night. One warm, clear evening we were in the Quadrado and stood in the dark, the moon and stars above, with light spilling from shop fronts and the trees full of lanterns. I had one of those rare, almost overwhelming feelings of perfect ease and wellbeing.
But it’s not just the Quadrado – everything about Trancoso is just so aesthetically pleasing. The broken-down jack fruit tree propping up four small boys idling away their day; the man leading a donkey and cart, heaped with grass, set against the faded candy-coloured shacks; the rhapsody in blue of sky and sea on the beach.”