Portugal

If you haven't already gathered as much, we love the deals.  And,
goodness me, there are some travel deals to be had while living in
London.  Originally we weren't planning on doing any European
traveling in December because we were coming back to Canada the end of
the month for Christmas, but we couldn't resist.

So expedia.co.uk once again came to our aid with a two night trip to
the Algarve via Air Portugal.  The Algarve is the southern most
province of Portugal that contains a lot of wavy  beaches, sandy
cliffs and according to our Portugal book, lots of people who steal
hub-caps.  We certainly saw a lot of the beaches and cliffs, but much
to our relief, the hub cap stealers did not present themselves.

The flight down was great.  Despite the cheap deal we got, we were
able to fly out of Heathrow airport (which is much more convenient
than the other London airports).  The flight time was also fairly
conducive to minimizing time away from work, and maximizing our days
away.  We landed at Faro airport after a decent through thoroughly
cloudless skies, which was a nice change from the greyness of London. 
The first things we saw were beaches.


The area is not super populous, so the trains and bus systems are
comparable to those in Canada.  Which means basically that the most
convenient mode of transport for tourists is renting a car.  So rent
one we did!

It was a tiny little Kia 1.0 Litre.  Surprisingly enough, it kept up
fine on the freeways and was able to over take without too much
difficulty.  It cornered not too badly, so I treated each roundabout
as a chicane in car racing.  That is, an annoying obstacle that exists
only to slow down vehicles, so must therefore be avoided only at the
highest of possible speeds.  But due to Laura's persistent arm jabs,
wheel squealing was kept to a minimum.

We drove the 50km to our hotel.  It was in a little town west of Faro
that seems to have nothing but resorts, condos, beaches and sunsets.


Our hotel was posh.  Over the course of the weekend we had two rooms,
one on each side of the hotel, but oddly enough they both had a view
of the ocean.

A breakfast buffet was included.  It was plentiful and yummy.  You
could tell that they catered to a very international clientele.  They
had full Continental, English and healthy breakfasts.  I was like a
kid in a candy shop.

On Saturday, we drove to the south-western most point of Europe.  This
was a historic location and was the jumping off point for many a
Portuguese voyage to far flung places back in the time of Portuguese
colonialism.

This fort dates back hundreds of years and was the centre of several
naval battles.

The beaches on the west coast of Portugal had some amazing waves for
surfing.  I pined for a wet suit and a body board.


Driving along the roads, and in people's back yards you could see
citrus trees in abundance.

Those are lemon, orange and grapefruit trees respectively.

There are cliffs all along the south coast, and many of them are
carved into neat shapes by the waves, and form little caverns.


The western coast seemed to be a little more grand.  The cliffs were
higher, and the ocean was a little menacing looking.


We stopped in to Lagos and drove/walked around the little streets and
did a little Christmas shopping.


We didn't see any clouds all weekend, and the beaches looked so
inviting.  There were tons of Spanish people in Campers parked along
the beaches.

If I were Spanish and had a camper van, that would be the life for me.

We were driving around aimlessly in the country when we happened upon
this parked car.

Looks normal doesn't it.  Well to all the Canadians it might, but to
the Portuguese (and to us) it looked darn well out of place!  Some
crazed British Colombian mad-person brought their car over to
Portugal!  We waited around for a little while to see who these people
were, but unfortunately they didn't come before we had to leave.  So
it remains a mystery to us who they were and why they were driving a
car with BC plates in southern Portugal.

When we got back to our hotel that evening, we discovered that the
power in our room, that had gone out before we left in the morning,
was still out.  So we switched rooms to one with a view of the pool,
and a nicer view of the ocean.


The next day we went into Faro and explored the eastern part of
southern Portugal.  It was neat seeing all the old men who hang out
along the beach.  It seems that they really live a relaxed lifestyle.


Continuing along the coast we popped into Espania!  It was the first
time that we'd been to Spain.  The gas was much cheaper on the Spanish
side of the border, which seemed odd, but we took advantage of it and
filled up (0.96 Euro cents).

The donkeys carts added some excitement to the Spanish roundabouts.

After a quick look around we drove back into Portugal and headed to
Faro airport to catch our flight back to London.

I can certainly see why the Brits are snapping up Portuguese real
estate like crazy.  It's only an hour  and 45 minute away, and it's a
awfully pretty.