Advertisement
Published: September 21st 2017
The seagulls here are massive. One of them‘s taken a liking to some leftover breakfast on the next table, and it‘s threatening to cause some serious damage to the crockery. Another one’s set up shop on top of our umbrella. It looks even more massive in silhouette. I hope they're friendly. I think I'd give up quickly if one of them wanted to fight me for a piece of toast.
We take the long hike into Albufeira. We pass a bar with signs outside it with a long list of English Premier League soccer matches that they'll be showing there over the next few days. An Englishman sees me looking at it and asks me which ones I'm planning to watch. When I tell him we're from Oz he says that we probably prefer Aussie Rules, which I'm surprised he's even heard of. He says that he can't understand why they play soccer in winter in England. He says that they've got the world's worst climate so they should at least play in the warmer months. I think everyone in England might get very depressed if there wasn't any soccer to watch in winter; he sounds depressed enough already about
his climate and he's not even there. I ask him whether there are any people left in England, because from what we've seen they all seem to be here. He says there are, but none of them are English.
We walk down onto the beach and then wander around the town. We pause for a few minutes to listen to a South American duo playing haunting pipe music in one of the squares.
Issy needs a new pair of sunglasses so it's off to browse some shops. It seems that you can spend anything from five to five hundred euros, which sounds like a fairly broad range for something that would seem to me to have a fairly standard set of components - a frame a couple of pieces of tinted glass. Maybe some of the frames are gold, but if so wouldn't they cost even more; I'm sure most of Elton John's shades probably cost a bomb. Hmmm. Now that I've thought about it a bit more maybe I should be surprised that the price range isn't even broader. Issy spins the sunglasses display stand around in one of the shops and knocks over an umbrella and
everything that's under it, including all the display stands. Mayhem ensues, and I think now might be a good time to move on .....
We stop for a snack in Fishermans Square. The food arrives and Issy says "gracias" to the waitress. I remind her that based on what our tuk tuk driver told us last night she might as well have told her to f*** off. She says she knows it's deeply offensive, but it's now become automatic. She repeats "obrigada" to herself, but the next time the waitress turns up she says "gracias" again. We've still got more than a week here in Portugal; I hope we can make it through without offending most of the population.
We buy a ticket for a tourist train, which looks like it might drop us somewhere back near the hotel. We're jammed into the back carriage with a bunch of English people (what else), including an eighteen month old boy and his parents. The youngster goes up and down the carriage a couple of times high-fiving everyone. He then starts to look a bit bored, so one of the older Englishmen launches into a rendition of "The Wheels on
the Bus Go Round and Round", and we all join in. He gets to the second verse which according to him goes "The women on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter". I'm not sure I've ever heard that particular version before. His wife doesn't look overly impressed and the singing soon grinds to a halt. The train drops us at what we're told is the stop nearest to our hotel. I'm glad we're wearing our walking shoes; I think that we might have been closer when we were still in Albufeira.
We have a siesta and then catch a bus back into town as the sun's setting. We go for a stroll along the beach and then settle into a Japanese/Chinese restaurant. None of the items on the menu have prices against them, and on closer inspection it seems that this is because this is one of those wonderful "all you can eat" establishments - as much as you can scoff down for the equivalent of somewhere around a bargain basement twenty dollars per head. It sounds too good to be true, and we wait for the catch. But no, we stuff ourselves until we can stuff no more,
and then get a bill for about twenty bucks, plus drinks. Issy's eyes are almost popping out of her head at the concept of being able to eat as much raw fish as you manage so cheaply, and if the look on her face is anything to go by I think that we might be back here again very soon. Surely this system must be very open to abuse. There are signs all over the menu saying not to waste food, but in theory there's nothing to stop you ordering fifty dishes, having a mouthful of each, and still only paying twenty dollars for the privilege. I wonder whether the staff have special treats in store for anyone who might be tempted to try this - Chinese water torture, bamboo shoots under the fingernails ...... Hmmm. We make sure not to leave anything behind .....
We catch another tuk tuk back to the hotel. This one struggles to get up even the slightest of hills, and the driver's constantly putting his hand out the window pretending to wind it up. It feels like it's about to fall apart. I don't think it's got any suspension so we feel every
bump as if the wheels were made of concrete.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 27; dbt: 0.037s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Femke Irik
non-member comment
Great blog post
Very cool blog post! I also wrote a blog post about things to do in Albufeira: https://www.seabookings.com/20-things-to-do-in-albufeira-algarve/ Albufeira is an amazing city with very cool watersprts and boat tours to do.