The Weeks That Kept Winking - Workations
Workations at Casa Fuzetta
A few quiet weeks at the start of the year, a house full of laptops and paintbrushes, and the giant bubble that holds it all together.
For years, people asked us if they could book a single room stay.
For years, we said no. When the house first opened, Tara had to choose between running it as a hotel and renting it exclusively, one group at a time. Exclusive use won, for all sorts of good reasons, and it has served us beautifully ever since.
Then the world learned to work from anywhere.
In February 2022, a tech startup booked the whole house and brought its team to Olhão. They wanted three weeks; we only had two left. Twelve coders worked side by side, the Wi-Fi held, and they loved it.
That got us thinking. If a team could work this well here, why not a house full of guests who had never met?
By 2023, the calendar was filling nicely, except for three weeks in February that sat there, empty, and kept winking at Tara. So she winked back. She opened those weeks to our community, room by room, and called it an experiment.
It has been a very happy one.
Not Quite a Holiday, Not Quite an Office
A Workation is exactly what it sounds like: work and holiday, blended, in one house for a week or more. Guests stay for a week at least, and some stay two weeks or longer.
It took a little while to catch on. It is still a new idea, and it means different things to different people.
Some come to escape a grey northern winter, and nobody could blame them, because the daily blue skies here are hard to argue with.
But Kate, Tara's co-host on The House of Stories podcast, has joined us for more than one Workation, and she noticed something more. People came to work in a different space. They came to look at a thorny problem from a new angle, or to finally begin the big project that never finds room in an ordinary week.
And they loved the creative energy of the house and of the town. A Workation gathers a wonderfully mixed group under one roof, and ideas get shared over breakfast with people you would never otherwise have met or confided in.
Everyone was interested. Everyone was interesting.
Holding the Bubble
We are best known for retreats. Travel & Leisure and Condé Nast Traveller have both named Casa Fuzetta one of the best yoga retreat venues in the world.
A Workation offers a subtly different experience and as a result asks something quite different of the house, and of its host.
A retreat group is close-knit by design. The leader holds the energy tightly, and the group moves through its days as one. On a Workation, Tara holds the space far more loosely.
The best way she can describe it is a bubble. Not the small ones we blew as children, but the giant ones street artists conjure with sticks and a loop of rope, wobbling and shimmering in the air. Hosting a Workation, she says, means creating that bubble and keeping it aloft.
Inside it, everyone has the independence to work, play and do their own thing. And yet the magic of the bubble is that nobody feels alone in it: each guest is welcomed and supported, held within a community of other creative souls.
One guest put it more beautifully than we ever could. Casa Fuzetta, they said, is a place where you can let your dreams take wings and fly. We could not ask for more than that.
Room to do your own thing. And yet never feel lonely.
This Is a Paintbrush
Every Workation has its regulars, and Dora is one of our favourites.
She is an artist and art teacher who arrives the way a good painting does: full of colour. Dora teaches art classes for our Workationers and our Heal the Healers retreats, and she specialises in adult beginners.
Tara happily counts herself among them.
Her own story began with a detour. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, Dora was painting in Provence and wanted one more workshop on her way home to Toronto. The one she found was in a town she had never heard of.
Olhão.
She fell for the funky little town at once and came back every year, bringing her partner, John, to see it too. In 2016 they spent their first winter here, and in 2017 they bought a house. When COVID kept them from returning to Canada, Olhão quietly became home.
"Keep your knees bent," she says of all of it, "and absorb the shocks."
Dora didn't pick up a brush until her late thirties, and her first art class left her in tears. When friends later urged her to teach, she promised herself she would do the exact opposite of what she had been through.
So in Dora's classes, nobody is expected to know anything. Lesson one is "This is a paintbrush. It goes in water." She wants everyone to paint the way they paint, not the way she paints, and when one student produced a ruler, the answer was simple: not in my class.
She actively encourages things to be wrong, because adults demand so much of themselves, to get it right. In one of Tara's first classes, Dora leaned over and whispered, "That's a bit timid." Then: "Are you timid?" Tara took up the challenge, and she has since painted a full-sheet watercolour, which Dora calls a huge step for any artist.
Everyone starts at zero. It's a very important place to be.
Get Lost. That's the Point.
Olhão, Dora says, is the perfect place to paint, because nothing in it is straight. The buildings are crooked, the windows lean, and there is not a single straight street in the old town.
It is a wonderful place to get lost, too. When our Workationers asked whether there was a walking tour, the answer was a cheerful no: just go and get lost, because that's the point. Dora even has a book about the town in mind, with a title to match: Let's Get Lost.
Every corner holds another painting, and the shortest walk between two doors holds more than you'd expect.
Then there is the light. Once you start to paint, you notice it everywhere, because you can't have shadow without it.
After one rare fortnight of cloud, Dora remembers turning to someone with real relief: "Oh, look, the shadows are back."
What keeps her here, though, is the village life. Olhão is a proper town, but the old quarter feels like a village, and after a city like Toronto, she calls it a wonderful new chapter of calm.
Tara has found the same. She made more friends in her first five years here than in twenty-five years in London, among an eclectic, creative, entrepreneurial community of every nationality, Portuguese very much included.
Olhão is no longer the hidden gem it was, and we would be fibbing to pretend otherwise. Some people love it and some don't, and the cobblestones are lovely right up until you trip on one. But stay a while and the neighbours begin to know your face; you have to prove yourself, as anywhere, and the welcome is worth it.
Dora's whole world sits within a few streets. Her home atelier is at the end of our road, and twice a year, in spring and autumn, she leads her own art retreats with our lovely neighbours at Casa Rosa, a left and a right away.
Every corner is another painting in the waiting.
Three Colours, One Brush
We asked Dora what she would say to anyone who suspects there might be a painter in them somewhere.
Keep it simple, she said. Don't buy ten brushes or twenty colours, and don't buy cheap paper. Buy three artist-quality colours, learn to mix your own, and use one brush. And don't draw first: just put the paint on the paper and let it happen.
It is rather good advice for a Workation, too. Bring the one project that matters and leave the rest at home. Don't over-plan the week. Put something on the page, let the house and the town do their quiet work, and see what comes.
Somewhere between the laptop and the paintbrush, between a morning's work and an afternoon spent getting lost, something loosens. People arrive with a deadline and a to-do list. More often than not, they leave a little less timid.
Take the leap. Trust. Go forward. And jump, with lots of colour and bent knees.
Workations 2027 run from 18 January to 24 February. It is the one time of year you can book a single room at Casa Fuzetta rather than the whole house, for seven nights or more, and many of our regulars stay far longer. Brunch is shared most mornings, as are several long dinners each week, and the rest of your time is entirely yours.
Although according to what appeals to the guests in the house that week, Tara will happily organise yoga practices, a soundbath, visits to her favourite vineyard or olive grove, or to the ateliers of her local artist friends.
You can find further details about our 2027 Workations HERE
Casa Fuzetta is a private home in the old town of Olhão, in Portugal's eastern Algarve, fifteen minutes from Faro airport. If a February with us is calling, write to Tara at casafuzetta@gmail.com or find the details at casafuzetta.com.
Come as guests. Leave as friends.
If you would like to deep dive into the Casa Fuzetta - House of Stories podcast. We invite you to explore the current two series via the links below.