Well, all good things must come to an end. We must consider ourselves fortunate to have escaped the Canadian winter – at least this year’s winter – for a brief respite. Right now as I pen this on our last full day, we feel that 3 weeks would have been more appropriate.
We always want what we don’t have, right?
Anyway, we’ve decided to hang about our apartment this weekend to soak up as much sun and local ambiance as possible. We did make a return visit to the gypsy market in Loule yesterday. We drove this time and it only took ½ hour verses 1½ hours on the bus. I have to say that bus trips do have their place and our excursion to Seville, Tangiers and Gibraltar demonstrated that, but I’d still rather do my own driving.
The market in Loule was even bigger than last weekend due I guess in part, to the fabulous weather with blue skies and temps hitting 25°. Both gypsy & farmer’s market were full to brimming with tourists. We had a couple of acquisition objectives that we quickly fulfilled and escaped back to Portimao. The afternoon afforded sun time and time to catch up on this blog.
For the evening, we went to Alvor for dinner to a restaurant recommended by our last tour guide Luis. Our Omega 3 is really up on this trip, with all the fish and seafood we’ve had. Last night we finally had sea bream, considered one of the finest fish in Portugal. The better fish are sold by weight, which we painfully discovered in France after ordering two fish that were 8 euros per 100 grams and we ended up with 1600 grams. Anyway, we had an English-speaking waiter last night, who gave us a fish lesson and told us what size fish would feed the four of us. Then it was grilled on charcoal BBQ’s at the front of the restaurant. We started with an octopus bean salad and followed with grilled prawns for the boys and mussels for Dawn. Then came the silver bream and a small snapper since the bream we chose only fed 3 people. We accompanied this with a nice Duoro white. This was amazing fish and we were all pleased with our choice – another fabulous meal!
Sunday meant packing for home. The clocks finally went ahead in Portugal last night, so that means tomorrow’s 5:30 a.m. departure for the airport in Faro will feel really early. Our car has to be back for 6:30 and our flight is 9:20.
Time for some retrospective! Would we come to Portugal again? Definitely and for longer! Would we stay in Portimao at the Jardim do Vau again? Definitely! It was centrally located for touring the Algarve and it’s location right on the beach it not duplicated very often in affordable accommodations. The amenities here were good and good dining and shopping were near by. It was also an easily accessible facility and we discovered that many Algarve rentals are, at best, obscure. Travelers with children, young or old, might be better off at the beach next to us, Praia de Rocha or in Albufeira, both happening places. It’s fairly quiet here.
So, another excellent adventure has wrapped up and it’s back to reality and apparently Canadian winter. Time to start planning the next trip!
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