Blogs from Albufeira, Algarve, Portugal, Europe - page 4

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 ... read more

The TV promised rain today for our journey south to Albufeira in the Algarve, and kept it! Swathes of rain, sometimes almost torrential, accompanied our navigation of the non-toll route. The open plains we drove across made the huge black clouds look very threatening and at one point we looked for a place to stop and wait for the downpour to ease a bit. At the entrance to a cemetery we sat off the road while the water poured downhill around us and minor flooding on the road deepened. Before this the weather had cleared for long enough to allow us to stop for lunch and a wander around Evora, an old fortified town with Roman temple ruins at the top of the hill. The postcards we bought here show how the town looks in the ... read more

Hi all, We left Lisbon after a great week and headed over the distinctive 25th April bridge, so named after the date of the 1974 revolution which ousted the long time Portuguese dictator Salazar, we drove south past the city of Setabul then turned slightly inland and into the region called Alentejo, (Alen-Tejo meaning all things south of the river Tejo or Tagus as it's commonly known) this large area south of Lisbon is the driest and hottest in Portugal and produces cork bark which is one of Portugal's main exports, as we drove by the endless woodlands almost all the trees had had their bark stripped up to the first branches where the cork had been removed. Our destination was Alcacer de Sal on the Sado estuary, long ago an important trade town built by ... read more

Stop nas je dogurao do pola puta, a onda smo uhvatili bus zato sto smo zurili da gledamo tekmu sa Turcima. Al dobro sad... Mesto se zove Albufeira i to je centar portugalskog turizma, ili Portugalska Ibiza ako hocete. Stvarno je guzva, mozda zato sto je subota, ali ljudi stoje ispred klubova jer nema mesta. Sve je prilagodjeno englezima, koji su ovde zastupljeni sa 95%, svuda utakmice premier lige, pinte piva pijane budale, i uzasno ruzne i debele devojke. Jedina dobra stvar sto su nam doneli ti englezi jeste dobra muzika, pa je to bilo nesto u cemu znamo da uzivamo. Ovde smo sa ovim rancima izgleda zalutali jer svi upiru prstom u nas i cuskaju se kad nas vide. Malo pre nego sto mi se smucilo od te atmosfere odlazimo u potragu za smestajem, i ... read more

Today started out quite early as we had to finish packing and clean up the villa. Breakfast was an assortment of leftovers. Malcolm, our host, arrived promptly at 9:00 a.m. to take our luggage and some of us (he had a very small car) into Alfeizerao where we caught our bus to go South to Albuferio in the Algarve. Cath, Renita and I walked in one last time. We had time for one last cafe grande at our favourite cafe (right across the street from the bus stop). Our bus arrived exactly at 9:45 and we were on our way. We were shown an example of Portugese patience when an old lady stepped out in front of the bus to cross the street in a small village we passed through. The bus driver braked hard to ... read more