James' in the UK

Southern Portugal was very interesting, half being huge and very touristy beach and golf resorts and the other half being quite traditional little villages. It seems like there are 2 totally different worlds here and you can't believe that they are interdispersed and only a few miles from each other. As we were there in the off peak tourist season I think we saw it in quite a different light to the hordes of English people who visit in summer but it was interesting all the same.

The mega touristy towns were very English - the kind of place where all the pubs advertise full english breakfasts and english premier league shown live. You kind of felt you were in England but with more daylight. We mostly avoided the really resorty areas (the places that aren't actually towns but just miles and miles of wall to wall resorts, but we did have lunch and a look around in Albufeira. To this day I have no idea how to pronouce the name of this town and I think we managed to catch a bus there and visit without ever having to say the name aloud.

Albufeira

Another day we jumped off the train and had lunch in Tavira, a much more traditional town. From what I understand it is known for it's beach which like every where else, the beach is several miles away from the town. In Tavira you had to catch a ferry to the beach (down the river and through the esturies) but as it wasn't summer they weren't running. However I think in our case the non beach weather was a good thing, it was a lovely little town with some great traditional little buidlings and streets and I think it would have been spoilt with more people. This was definately some where that we needed to use our phrase book to order our lunch.

In Tavira we noticed many more of the patterned and painted tile work that decorated some Portuguese buildings. Some houses will have the entire front wall covered in patterned tiles and the street and information signs are definately a step up from you average street sign in Adelaide.

Street Sign in Tavira

Our favourite place in Portugal was the beach at Sagres. Sagres is quite a relaxed surfy kind of town which was a bit of a contrast to the fast paced tourist hangouts, and is geographically as far away as you can get from Australia whilst still being on the mainland. On a nearby headland there was a defensive fort which, due to the steep cliffs on 3 sides, was really a big wall that went across the narrowest part of the headland. The fort was really cool and we had a great time looking around and watching the men fishing off the tops of the huge cliffs. We then sat on a rock on the beach and watched the sun go down over the fort.

We caught a bus back to Lagos and a train back to Faro. As we were heading back on the train in the dark I started to look at the names of the town we were going through, and none of them seemed famliar. Adrian was asleep so I couldn't ask him and I knew the train line we were on had a branch off that went to Lisbon. More towns and more unfamiliar names. I was beginning to wonder where we would end up staying in Lisbon instead of our wonderful hotel in Faro. At one stage Adrian woke up and he convinced me the towns were the ones we passed through on the way out, and we pulled back into Faro train station so everything was OK!

Snack of Choice in Portugal: Portuguese Cakes

Although it was a little delayed we finally got to enjoy a honeymoon and after being so busy before and after trhe wedding it was good to relax. Unfourtunatley our flight out was an early one and was very difficult on our still jetlagged bodies.

We were going to catch a bus from the airport to the hotel but it was raining very hard and we thought we saw a bus go past without stopping so we went for a taxi. Lucky we did because I think we may have ended up swimming to the hotel.

We had arrived during a bit of a storm and soon after getting to the hotel we experienced some flooding. First there was just water collecting in the drain but pretty soon you couldn't see any of the curbs or the roundabout and women were putting bags over their shoes to cross the road. While this seemed like what was required at the time we later learnt about the Portuguese fascination with footware.....

Flooded Streets of Faro

We couldn't check into the hotel straight away but we could leave our bags so we set out on foot to explore Faro. In general it wasn't an overly exciting city, but we managed to find enough to look at until we could check into the hotel.

Our hotel was really nice, very modern and had prime positions looking over the marina. The staff knew we were on our honeymoon so they gave us the room with the best view and brought a bottle of champagne to our room which was very sweet.

Due to our early start and jetlag we were feeling a bit tired so we thought we'd participate in a ciesta which is apparently observed in Portugal. We layed down for a nap at about 3pm.......and woke up at 3am the next morning. We didn't really know we were that tired but I'm pretty sure we had just created the worlds longest ciesta!

We had missed tea and were now STARVING and had no option for getting food until the breakfast buffet at 8am. It was a very long wait but eventually 8am came and we pigged out! Seriously it was getting embarassing with the staff watching every trip we made for more food.

It was at this point we discovered Portuguese pastries and what a discovery it was. They had a selection of the little cakes and pastries that really appealed to our sweet teeth, many were consumed during our stay.

The restaurant where breakfast was served was on the top floor of the hotel and between mouthfuls we managed to enjoy the view.

Faro Marina from the Hotel

Other than the first day we mostly used Faro as a base and were only there in the mornings and evenings. In the evening we would head into the maze of pedestrian streets in the old part of town and fluff our way through ordering food in the local restaurants.

We were fascinated by the christmas lights in Faro. Strung between the buildings was an incredible collection of christmas lights, huge displays in varying designs and colours. The other thing that intrigued us was the red carpet, metres and metres of it spanning the length of the many pedestrian streets. It looked really cool against the white diamond paving stones and certainly bought a luxurios feel to shopping.

On our night time wandering and window shopping we noticed an unusual trend......shoes. The shoe shops seemed to out number clothes shops about 6-1 and some of the shoe shops were huge. In Portugal women take shoes very seriously. You've got to love a country that invests so much time and money in their footwear. Unfortunatley I did not support the local shoe industry while I was there.

Snack of Choice in Portugal: Portuguese Custard Tarts