Although we enjoyed our stay in the Algarve it was far too English for our liking – pubs and bars offering steak & kidney pies and carveries. Having said that there were a few genuine Portuguese restaurants and we had an excellent lunch in one of them on Mothers’ Day. But by the end of our stay we were looking forward to seeing more of the real Portugal.
We’ve not driven that far north, but the differences are marked. It’s very rural, the roads are quiet and the whole feel of the area is more peaceful. We have also noticed a big difference in the type of ‘eateries’ on offer. On my birthday (Thursday) we had lunch in a local bar/restaurant – a busy place with lots of locals in attendance (always a good sign). We had the usual olives and bread while we ordered followed by a very good homemade soup. (Soup is a speciality in Portugal, it is always on the menu as a choice of starter, and there are usually 3 different ones to choose from…fish, meat and veg.) The daily specials were in Portuguese but with the help of our handy Franklin translating machine we managed to decipher it – Julie ordered the ‘hen’ (a very well stewed redundant layer!) and I went for the mixed grill. The food was excellent, too much for us to finish, even though we tried very hard to wash it all down with a litre of white wine! We finished with coffees and all for less than 20 euros.
The site we are staying at is one we have been looking forward to since we started planning our trip. It’s a brand new (opened in 2009) Eco-friendly site. We particularly wanted to investigate the ‘eco’ bit as we have stayed on sites that need you to take all your own rubbish away to sites that provide containers for everything from glass to potato peelings. We’re enjoying our stay but have to say that the site is a bit of an enigma – some things are done very well but others are not so good.
Due to the unusually wet winter the pitches are too muddy to use so we are parked on one of the gravel link roads. No problem with that and we are next to a grassy area with a picnic table which in high season would be a shared communal area but at this time of year it’s all ours. Lovely!
They’ve also opened all the toilet/shower blocks which means that have our own personal block to go with our personal picnic area, but….unless we’ve missed something important to press/turn on/do… the showers are cold. Actually that’s a bit of an exaggeration – they’re not cold – if you run them long enough they get to lukewarm but then just when you are steeling yourself to step underneath they run cold again! Which is really odd seeing that they have 3 massive solar panels on the roof and the weather’s been quite sunny!
But having so much space around us is brilliant – we’ve not had to keep Benji on the lead as we are a good 100 metres from the next caravan, and he has also enjoyed the thick grass to roll and play on.
Five minutes walk from our pitch is the piece de resistance for Zmar. An area which includes a massive lounge and a large indoor pool with a wave machine (we’ve also discovered that the showers in the pool changing rooms have hot water so use those now). There’s also a gym and free wifi and a spa. We’ve been a bit reluctant to use the bar and restaurant as there never seems to be anyone else in there but as it’s the weekend and there are more people on site we are going to give it a try this evening.
While out sightseeing we’ve visited a few of the local beaches. One in particular we have fallen in love with…….
……and we will be spending tomorrow, our wedding anniversary, there with a picnic.
It’s been good to see this area, so close to the Algarve, but very different. Tuesday sees us moving inland away from the coast to prepare for the lead up to Easter.
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