Portugal - Sangria, Kamakazi Cats and Boring Brits

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Day I - Saturday November 16th

Glyn and I flew into Faro airport from Birmingham with Britain's Most Boring. Seriously, we'd had to sit on the plane for two hours before it even took off due to some technical faults listening to golf bores wittering on constantly to an elderly lady next to them, as she started to wish she'd booked a week in Digbeth Coach Station instead. They never stopped talking of golf during the entire 2.5 hour flight, pointing out golf courses as we got closer to our destination and talking excitedly of the most boring events in the history of man.

Arriving at the car hire place, more British people bored the crap out of the staff with lifetime tales of every car they'd driven or actually asking for ALL the insurances available due to some minor, but lengthily described accident in Crete. The Portuguese kept fixed smiles as they slowly died inside. If this is the usual crowd from the UK, Portugal must have a pretty dim view of us.

The Fiat Panda we'd hired was practically new and only 26 euros for the week. Glyn thinks it's embarrassing but I think it's cute.

The first thing I noticed about being in Portugal was that it was slightly warm, but not as hot as hoped. Apparently it was 25 degrees last week but really gone down this week, never mind, it's still sunny and loads better than home.

The first cat I saw was roadkill :-( The second cat I saw was lucky not to be roadkill as it did a kamakazi leap across a duel carriageway in front of speeding cars. So far I've seen a few stray dogs, and random single sheep and cows in people's back yards.

Glyn drove us to Albufeira which was about a 40 minute drive away and our home for the week. It is touristy but quiet as it's November and we are in a quieter area. Glyn had found us a bargain at 180 quid each for the week for an apartment with kitchen, bathroom, balcony, use of pool and flight included.

After a quick trip to an expensive supermarket (where I bought wine that had a cat on the label) we wandered down to the almost secluded beach that is a few minutes walk from our apartment. It was about 3pm by now and the matching orange sand and cliffs were golden in the yellow sunlight. There were very few people: a couple walking and a lone woman reading a book.

We paddled in the cold sea and wandered along the beach taking many photos as the light was asking for it.

We walked up some steps and followed what once was a fence to keep numpty tourists from falling over the cliffs, but was now a dodgy path due to generations of fools making it so. There were a good few view points and coves with secluded beaches due to the incoming tide. It was very pretty but at times difficult terrain - the type of sandy steep paths that are one step forward, seven steps sliding backwards.

After a couple of miles I guess, we came to a beach that had boats and a couple of bars. It was around 5pm and we settled to take photos of the sunset, which was pretty awesome. If my Mum is reading this, she would love to quote me at age 14 when I said that if you've seen one sunset, you've seen them all. But this one was better than most and even better on my camera!

We walked inland, past many empty or closed bars and restaurants with expensive menus. But we came upon one place just as the only customers were leaving and the prices looked ok. The waitress was very friendly and encouraging of Glyn's attempts at Portuguese / Spanish. The only veggie stuff on the menu were omelettes, but having travelled around Peru, this was familiar to me. However, I did have half a litre of my first sangria and that was awesome! Tasted good but quite a kick too The omelette was nice enough and Glyn was very impressed with his fish soup and Portuguese style beef with egg and stuff. He also had a couple of soft drinks and a Italian coffee, the entire bill came to 24.50 euros which I reckon is pretty good.

It was dark and a bit cold as we walked back to our apartment. Glyn is now sleeping as he barely slept on the plane due to not wanting to miss out on the golf conversation and we'd left at 4am (note from Glyn: this isn't true! The real reason I did not sleep was that there was only enough leg room for a sparrow). I'm drinking the cat label wine (Gatao) which is actually good for 3 euros!

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