Holiday In Portugal

Me and Amanda got back from a nice holiday in Portugal on Saturday. It's taken a few days to get the photo's sorted out as I am lazy :-). Like our holiday to Portugal last year, we returned to Albufeira. Last year we stayed in the new town section which is quite clubby. We was so busy when there, that we never got around to visiting the old town.



This year Amanda booked a hotel in the old town. It's a real shame we didn't visit the old town last year as it is really nice and cosmopolitan. Our hotel, the Casa Michell Apartments, where a 5 minute walk from the main square. Our apartment was a self catering apartment. We decided to cook on alternative nights to eating out, so that helped control costs :-)

The weather was really nice. The only slightly dodgy day was the Tuesday. It was cloudy with a breeze, but it was still warm. The rest of the week it was about 27 degrees, so nice tans all around.

One thing we really wanted to do on this holiday was go quad biking again. We never got to do it last year, so Amanda found a company that runs it in albufeira.

The company Amanda found was called Quad Ventura. This company was run by a British couple (Claire and Rory) who moved out to Portugal to take over the company in February. We booked their top excursion, which is a 4 hour tour into the country.

You need to take your driving license though as parts of the tour involves driving on the road, although these roads are not busy. But the law is the law :-) The Bikes have limiters on them also, so you can't go above 55kph. But believe me this is fast enough when you are that close to the ground.

On the Wednesday we booked a boat trip. This was around the coast and stopped at a nice beach in the afternoon for a BBQ. One of the things on offer was BBQ'd sardines. I thought they were really nice although Amanda has a thing about cooked fish with their heads on, so she had the chicken instead :-)

The night life in the Albufeura old town is different to the new town. Instead of loud clubs and teenagers puking their guts up all over the place, the old town was full of chilled out bars and restaurant's around a square. The ambiance here was really nice and chilled out.

The final trip we booked was a Jeep Safari. We did one of these last year and really enjoyed it. One word of warning though. If you book it though First Choice / Thompson, the jeep is likely to be closed top and the trip would be crap. We booked through a tour agent in town and got a nice open top jeep.

This means when the driver goes off road you can stand up in the back. This is a great experience. The driver doesn't really go that fast so it is easy to hold on. Well, kind of, it did get fast at some points, but it was all part of the enjoyment.

All in all a great week away and very relaxing. We both have nice tans to show for the week. It's a shame it is over. 1 week isn't really enough, but there you go. I have been back at work a few days now, so crashed back down to reality :-)