Winter blues begone!

Colm O'Regan skips the bullfight and soaks up the sun in the Algarve

After landing in Faro airport any fleeting dislocation anxiety we felt was banished by the headline in the English language newspaper ‘The Portugal News’. “MORE SACRIFICE WANTED: IMF praises Portugal but says more austerity measures needed.” Straight away, we felt right at home.

Albufeira is a good-sized town about half an hour from Faro. To the south it is bounded by the shimmering waters of the Atlantic, to the north it is guarded by a series of roundabouts. Roundabout art design seems to have reached a zenith in this part of the Algarve. Giant concrete flowers, copper ships and stone watches all adorn the intersections. The kind of artwork that gets stolen in Ireland and smelted down.

The first thing that strikes you about Albufeira, and in particular the location of our hotel, is its Fierce-Handiness-Altogether. Nothing was more than 10 or 15 minutes pleasant walk away. We were equidistant from the Old and New Towns, the shopping centre was next door and there was an escalator(!) down to the beach.

Also at the other end of the escalator was the Old Town with its wide array of restaurants. To paraphrase Phil Lynott, we spent most of our monae in the Oooold Town. It was easy. The food was uniformly excellent - especially the fish. So excellent was the food that about 70% of the waiters we encountered thought it unnecessary to be in any way friendly during our meal. One very honourable exception was the Churrasqiera snack bar. The owner there regaled us with “I knew Cristiano Ronaldo when he was this high” stories. But nearly everywhere else, the food just spoke for itself. It had to.

As the week progressed, we settled into a pleasing pattern of reading by the pool, taking a break every now and then to watch substantial German ladies the colour of a Ronsealed fence being put through their paces by the AquaZumba instructor, wandering down to the Old Town for food, and sploshing about in the sea.

But humans abhor contentment so we decided to do some excursions. We started our programme of events with a trip to Slide and Splash, a water park in Lagoa about half an hour away by bus.