heading home tomorrow and the title just about sums up our 10 days in the Algarve.
First things first, though: I love the tile facades common to the region. Maybe one day my house'll look as cool as this one from the outside.
This has been the most family friendly place we've ever been, so if you're looking for a sunny take-the-crew destination, put Algarve on your list. (but stay away in the peak season. It's busy now and this is the off season so I can't fathom what July and August are like).
Nowhere in Europe have the people been nicer (the locals or the other tourists). If the boys were teenagers I'd have given them bus fare and turned them loose, with only minimal fretting.
There's no language barrier whatsoever**, but we are the only Ameicans we encountered this week. We're clearly not British, so we were often asked where we were from. Then, we watched the less pushy of the small-talkers try to politely figure out why the American family from Florida flew all the way across the pond to go to the beach. (The more pushy didn't wonder -- they just asked what brought us Yanks to Algarve).
Before he asked their names or their ages, C asked every kid he met at the pool if they spoke English, getting odd looks from both the kids and the grownups, what do they speak in America, if not English? I imagine he's far more aware than any of his kiddie-pool counterparts that there are kids -- lots and lots of them, inf act-- that don't speak English. Hopefully they didn't think that he was implying that what they were speaking wasn't English. We won't even get into the chuckles he occassioned when he announced across the pool deck, "mommy, I have to go potty." in what is clearly American lexicon. We have free British satellite TV at the apartment and he's taken to apeing a British accent the last few days, so we'll see how long that lasts once we get home.
** However, even without a language barrier we have had a few "foreigner" moments. I managed to come home from the store with fabric softener rather than detergent and I sent D to the store to get diapers, instructing him to get a name brand. After all, in Germany they actually call diapers, Pampers. He came home with pullups, Huggies pullups, 'cause he didn't recognize any of the other brands. (Fortuitous discovery: the pullups are actually easier when travelling, 'especially for a mama who never quite mastered the art of the standing diaper change
We spent our entire 10 days in the 80 km stretch between Faro and Portimao, checking out the local beaches or wandering the local villages in the AM, heading back to the pool for the aftenoon, and sometimes venturing out for an evening meal and sometimes hitting the Mercador (grocery store) on the corner for self catering cooking.
If you go, our favorite activities....
Historic Faro: With little ones it was too much to tackle Faro the day we landed, and too much to think about doing it the day we left, but we did go back one AM and I'm super glad we did. The historic district is gorgeous --white washed buildings and palm trees a plenty. We climbed the 13th century Faro cathedral (all 68 steps of it, even C did it without complaining). And the boys frolicked on the small observation platform while we took in the gorgeous views of the coast and counted the planes landing at the airport. We also scored our best family portrait in Europe, to date: no one's eyes are closed, no one's screaming or squinting, everyone looks half-way decent. EXCEPT, some old British dude is in the corner, just like he was grandpa, tagging along. We'll either photoshop him out or pretend he actually belongs to us.
Silves: Plan to spend the entire AM, at least through lunch. In addition to excellent countryside views, pretty streets and riverside walks, there's an old Moorish castle there that all 3 of my boys loved to climb and explore. It's *not* a German-style castle, so there's no tour, no organized plan (not even a tour guide in English). But it's cheap, picturesque, with a pretty flower garden and a handy cafe inside, and filled with local lore. Given that I knew the context (we were in an old castle, after all) my undergraduate Spanish was able to get us the gist of the signs, which were all in Portuguese, but if you've ever been in an old fort before, you too would've gotten the gist regardless of your lnaguage skills. It's pretty obvious where the dungeons, kitchen's etc are.
Praha D.Roche (at Portimao) was our favorite beach. Lots of access points, pretty views and was enough beach at this time of year that you had lots of room to stretch out. One book we read said it is the most photographed beach in the region, and deservedly so. The strip along the beach is a fun place to stroll. It also has a boardwalk, down on the sand. Portimao's old town (about 2km from the beach) is nothing special, but it has Dona Barco, where I ate the best meal *ever*. Seafood and Rice it says on the menu. They brought a huge pot (enough for 2, easy) of thick, tomato-sauce-based seafood chowder, full of shrimp, prawns, mussles, clams, and crab legs. No silly fillers, like vegetables. Just plenty of seafood and rice in a delicious sauce.. They also had the best sardines we sampled.
Sardines: Don't wriggle your nose. Try them. Once you do, you'll eat them, you'll eat alot of them, especially grilled. Eat the skin, even (do leave the bones, at least the back bone, the little ones are up to you). Nothing at all like canned sardines or anchovies in your grocer's aisle.
Other notes:
Albufiera has three main sections: city hall, the strip, and old town. All three are visited by the tourist train that makes a 40 minute loop connecting the three until 2AM. (all day passes are 3E, under 6 free). Most apartments are within walking distance of one of the stops. The "strip" is the the Daytona Beach of the area (minus the clam shell ampitheater or a Krispy Creme). It feels a little has-been, a little dingy, and if it was all you saw, you'd leave scratching your head as to the area's appeal. Old Town is pleasant with a pretty beach and is fun to wander. City Hall is a utilitarian area with a shopping mall, McDonalds, and oodles of snack stands, bakeries, and souvenir shops.
The Villamoura Marina is a fun, more upscale place to people watch. Most of the boat tours go out of Villamoura. Of course, we chose to do our boat tour on the one less-than-nice day AND on the day B decided to be as uncooperative as possible. He was so bad that all the other mamas felt like they needed to tell me stories of when their two-year old did something similar on a plane/boat/train etc.
Altes: skip it. Tour buses routinely stop there and let everyone off to wander. It is full of narrow twisty streets and the home to a famous Portugues poet, but there are other villages (Silves, for example) with lots more character.
It's been a great time. I doubt we'll be back, just 'cause there are so many more places we want to see in our short time here, but we're not the only ones who've enjoyed it. We had a lovely conversation with a Dutch couple one morning on the beach who, unbeknownst to us, watched us have icecream the night before in Albufeira. They were quite smitten with my boys and their antics, especially the little one (my boys can be charming at times) so they struck up a conversation us when were building sand animals the next day. They have beach-vacationed in Greece, Turkey, Malta and the Canary Islands, and they think Portugal's the best of the lot. Later in the week we met an older British couple, retired RAF, who curiously enough were stationed in the Geilenkirchen area back in the Post WW2, pre-reunification days. They too like the Algarve best of all their sunny holidays. (Although they did have to regale us with tales of how nowhere is as it "used to be")
Anyway, 8 enthusiastic thumbs up. If you want all-inclusive, go to Turkey, but if you simply want a beach pad, consider Algarve (and if you're doing Ryan Air from GK, try to make the Maastricht airport work, SOOOOOOOOO much easier than Weeze).
Well, that's exactly what we did. The Disney magic left Port Canaveral May14 bound for Barcelona, Spain. She arrived two weeks later and in between stopped in the Bahamas; Funchal, Portugal; Gibraltar; and Cadiz, Spain. Of the 14 nights on board, 6 of those were at sea crossing the Atlantic between Castaway Cay, Bahamas and Portugal's Atlantic island, Madeira. Almost everything we've done over here falls somehow/someway into a "best ever" category, but it was indeed "the best ever" (or at least very very cool) to wake up on day 3 and look at the map on your stateroom TV and see the boat smack dab in the middle of the ocean, to stand at the rails and see nothing but ocean all around you and know that yep, there really is nothing but ocean all around you. Six days trapped on a cruise boat with no where to go but on another lap around the deck might be a little much on any other cruise line, but I think I could spend 6 weeks on a DCL cruise and not once feel the need to send anyone up the crow's nest looking for land. All the glowing things I wrote about our first DCL experience holds true, especially the dining room staff who made it their mission to get my picky two year old to eat something other than chocolate milk. 
(Full Disclosure: Some of my continued DCL enthusiasm comes from the fact that in the months since our eastbound transatlantic with Disney we have taken an eastern Mediterranean cruise with another major cruise line, and while that was a great trip with some of the most AMAZING sightseeing, the cruise experience on that other boat can't compare to DCL's. If we had never sailed with Disney, we would have loved sailing this other line, but as we had already sailed Disney we were left thinking this other company needed to find itself a stash of pixie dust somewhere)
I also very much enjoyed MADEIRA, Portugal. We made port at Funchal and took a sightseeing bus up into the mountains. We saw some stunning scenery and ate a wonderful lunch of Espada, the local catch, at a cliffside patio cafe. Then, we rode the bus back downtown to shop for lace and wine. Here's another thing I like about DCL: We landed in Funchal on a Sunday, yet DCL made prior arrangements with some local shops to be open. (In contrast, that other cruise line put us ashore in Malta on a Sunday where not-a-thing but a few tacky souvenir stands and bars were open.) Because it was Sunday, we couldn't go to a tasting at the most famous of the Madeiran wine bars, but the wine shops we stopped into did tastings for us and of course we came home with several bottles of the famous spirit. The Bordal lace "factory" also opened and we saw where generations of Madeiran women have made lace products by hand; they still make their lace by hand at this factory. And although lace isn't really my style, I now have a far better appreciation of just how much work goes into producing one lace tablecloth.
