Breakfast, sunscreen and drive to Albufiera – managed to get there just before 11am into a covered car park up on the hillside above the beach area. Albufiera is definitely the place for the youngsters or party goers as we found after our nearly 4 hour (must be a be record for us) beach session – there are probably about a hundred different bars to choose from in the main town centre area by the beach that would just be electic come night time. The town is on a mega hillside with typically Algarvian roads that are just passable by small cars etc – Bruce would be a struggle, particularly is a bus or another Bruce came the other way…

Anyway, this place will definitely heat up come sundown with the mega offers for cheap beer (and food incidentally) and would likely be a lot of fun if we didn’t have the kids with us.

The beach was very coarse sand with shells in for good measure but the water was possibly the clearest that we have seen since being in Antigua a few years ago… The kids thoroughly enjoyed their time on the beach and we may just have overcooked Olly a tad although suspect that all evidence will have vanished in the morning. The best beach that we have come across so far has to be the main Caroveiro beach that just had the nicer small grain sand and little in the way of shells etc.

We ventured over to Vilamoura before heading back and it appears to be a sensational place – felt like we were back in Los Gatos as we drove through the town centre. We were impressed enough that we will be making the drive back down there tomorrow to spend much of the day taking in the sights etc. The marina for one looked to be a multi billion dollar affair and the golf courses…. Pembo needs to figure a way to get his ass here for a day or two – the courses that we drove alongside certainly looked to be of the best that we have ever seen.

We took a trip out to the Aqua Portamio shopping centre after breakfast (having downloaded the free Portugal GPS software for the iPad / iPhone as backup 🙂

The shopping didn’t take long (we had the boys with us after all) so we drove on to Lagos to see the sights etc. Beautiful harbour and beaches at Lagos, so maybe if we have time while we have the car we could go back for some beach time.

Back to the pool this afternoon for some rays and some swimming practise. The morning was mostly overcast and mid 20’s C so we didn’t miss any sun action of consequence by going out in the car. Olly managed 20 mins sleep on the way back so hopefully it will make him less ratty later on.

Dinner in tonight and then a trip tomorrow to Albufeire which is supposed to be v nice – maybe Vilamoure if time permits.

On beaches, in restaurants and the like reminds you of two highly (un)desirable traits :

1. Smoking
2. Speedos

The two S’s are just great when it comes to the holiday experience 🙂

We had completely forgotten all about it as they do not translate to the US West Coast at all.

We decided today to rent a car to do a little exploring for a few days – a €35 daily rental ended up being €100 per day of course once it became clear that we wanted five doors and A/C. So, a little Mitsubishi Colt was dropped off for us tonight at 6pm and we have already been out to Portimao and Lagoa on a small trip, before stopping off at an Italian restaurant in Carvoeiro for dinner. The service in the restaurant was incredibly slow – took almost 2 hours 🙁 so a good job the food was pretty good. The boys did well to behave as well as they did for the whole time as they were clearly very bored and tired come the end.

To top it off, we returned to the car and daddy was struggling to get the key in the lock. He quickly realised that the rest of the Rust clan weren’t at the car… turns out they were at the car, just that daddy was trying to get into the WRONG car !!!!

It has been a relaxing but chilly day today – the sun didn’t make its presence felt until 6pm so we have actually had a home day today reading / playing etc.

Tomorrow, we go in search of shopping… 🙂

Checkout the tans already 🙂