This blog is taking place in the future. By the time this is published we are already on our second house sit. We ran short of data at the tail end of our Albufeira stay, and the wifi was not very great at our first house sit. So this is playing catch-up a bit, but we digress…
The beginning of the week was particularly warm. It was in the high twenties, so we spent another day close to base camp and enjoyed cooling off in the pool. Plus the Easter weekend was still in swing and everyone is enjoying a ’feliz páscoa’ here in Albufeira.
It was a relaxing start to the week. (Sunday is the first day of the week here, not Monday). We did enjoy people watching as part of our morning coffee routine. We could see lots of holiday makers heading for the local Aldi supermarket expecting it to be open on a Sunday? Amazed us at how many people were expecting it to be open. Then seeing them all return down the road empty handed… It’s not like in the UK where almost anything can be found all week round.
The Strip (a street full of bars and clubs) seems to be the place for stag and hen parties, but even that seemed to be subdued for the Easter Sunday. We usually bypassed it mainly to get to the bank and main shops. We also had a local tavern who promoted live music and karaoke and that was unusually quiet.
So Monday was an opportunity to explore a bit more, and we decided to take a train ride to Faro. The station was a fifteen minute drive from our apartment. we left our car there for the day which was free. Train journeys are relatively cheap too. That is if you get the national service instead of the quicker inter-city trains. For two return tickets it was under 10€. There was a nice cheap cafe at the station, so we opted for a toasty and coffees before heading off.
We were pleasantly surprised with Faro. Especially the old part of the town and surrounding area. There is the airport near Faro, and you are frequently seeing flights full of tourists landing and taking off, but it wasn’t as noisy as we were expecting.
We took the opportunity to explore a couple of the historic churches. The first in the old town, and the second including a chapel decorated entirely with human bones and skulls. A reminder of our mortality and why we should ‘seize the day’!
We did the usual stops for coffee’s and refreshments which were all very nice and not too expensive, even for the Algarve. We then headed back to the station and waited for our return trip, which was delayed and quite crowded. We both were surprised at how popular it was, and wondered if they put on more capacity for the busy months?
Our next adventure was planned to be a long walk, but the weather was more favorable later in the week, so we took advantage of a brief window of opportunity to check out the town of Vilamoura. We both were a bit disappointed to be honest. It is more like a resort, rather than a town. It does not feel authentic, and definitely does not ’feel’ portuguese. It seems to cater for golfers and yacht owners and we both agreed it gave off that ’pretentious’ vibe, that places where the rich and famous gather. But…we came we saw and can tick it off as done. The one good aspect, for Wayne anyway, was that there was an interesting site of a Roman villa excavated here, but it was sadly closed.
At the end of the week we finally got to do our planned walk. The hike of the ’seven hanging valleys’. It was a great day out and a really enjoyable walk. I suppose the thing that struck us both was how busy it was, given that it was still early in the season. But given it is supposed to be one of Europe’s best hikes, it is probably not that surprising.
The final week was cut a little short, as we arranged to do a house sit, which meant leaving our booked apartment holiday three days early. But not before enjoying some food not as easily available where we live in central portugal, like a ’western style chinese’ and good old fashioned british ’fish n chips’.
So our time in Albufiera was coming to an end. It was time to start our next set of house sits. We had three back to back house sits that enabled us to extend our Algarve experience.
We were getting excited to continue our journey and visit some fantastic places, and more importantly some very lovely and interesting people and their darling pets…
Our Portuguese Life 