Blogs from Albufeira, Algarve, Portugal, Europe - page 3

How can one give justice in describing the cliffed beaches of Albufeira? Simply breath taking! Early in the day, we couldn't make up our mind on which beach to settle on as we read about several beaches that sounded very interesting. So we decided to take the car and go beach hopping with our towels, sun screen and flip flops!! What a feeling!! We started with Praia de Falesia, which was the closest to our apartment, then went to Praia Vasco de Gamma and walked the sandy coastline until Praia de Pescadores with few dips in the fresh water. Around the Praia de Pescadores, you can find many fun shops and restaurants. Our last beach stop was Praia Coelha, which was my favorite :) We finally ended our day by dining in Praia de Pescadores in ... read more

The rain had returned overnight but at least as dawn came up it started to clear away which should give us an opportunity to do a little exploring of Albufeira. It had been a few days since we had done our washing so there was that to catch up on and with the help of a small washing line around the corner of our poolside apartment we could at least get the clothes on the line and give them a good start to dry in the sunshine. The downtown area of Albufeira is fairly small or at least the part we discovered on our late morning stroll was. We retraced our steps from last night’s excursion out to dinner and ventured past Ricardo’s Restaurant but kept our walk back from the beach as we had the ... read more

The last two days in Portugal we spent enjoying the beach and the resort pool. We have seen a lot of the southern part of Portugal known as the Algarve region. We have learned the beaches are popular places for people from the U.K.to come for their holidays. They seem to love to bake in the sun and become as red as lobsters. The men like to wear tight skimpy swimsuits. It is as if they bought one suit when they were 10 years old and continue to wear the same suit at 60 no matter how much they have grown over the years. And the women seem to buy only bikinis no matter how young or old or small or large, that is if they wear a top at all! Oh, the sights we have ... read more

We have spent the last two days orienting ourselves to Albufeira. It is a busy, crowded resort town similar to Cabo or Cancun. The majority of people here are English (from the United Kingdom), Irish, and German. People are quite surprised and pleased when they find out we are from the U.S. We thought we would see some real Portuguese life by going into "old town". That area was every bit as crowded as the beach area. So we decided to take the advice of a guy we met by the pool and rented a car. We will tour the coast and some inland areas in the next couple of days. After dinner, which by the way the food here is delicious. Jerry had a dish called chicken piri piri. The recipe is online. I will ... read more

Day 7 - Friday 22nd November There was a bit of rain this morning, so Glyn and I thought that now is a good time to go to the beach. We drove about 18 miles to Senhora da Rocha which is a beach named after a small chapel on its promontory. According to the guidebook, it is actually three small sheltered beaches. The first beach was indeed small and sheltered. It had a cafe, toilets and a few battered boats pulled in for the winter. Apart from cafe staff and a tabby cat, no one else was there. We walked along the small beach and found what we thought at first was a cave. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be a tunnel about 100metres long, not to Narnia, but another desolate beach. This one ... read more