Before we knew it, Friday had arrived - how is that possible! We started the morning at Praia de Oura, the lovely beach nearest our hotel. At this point it was warm and sunny, it was lovely walking along the sand and exploring the rocky coves. The ocean is such an amazing colour, almost unreal! Around lunch time we headed back to the hotel, neither of us were hungry so we picked up croissants and fruit juice from the supermarket. We sat out on our balcony and enjoyed those before heading out again to pick up our afternoon tour. We didn't have the greatest view from your balcony, but still nice to sit there and enjoy the sunshine.
We had booked a trip to Silves and Monchique as we wanted to see a bit more of the Algarve. The first hour was a nightmare as all we were doing was picking up people. The coach was absolutely full by the time we started heading out towards Silves. Finally though we reached our first destination, alas we only had 75 minutes there and we had to make the decision - do we spend most of that time walking up to the castle only to not have enough time to go inside and explore. To us that would be torturous so we decided instead to have a coffee and enjoy ambling about the little tow, exploring the little side streets and all the little shops. Turned out to be the perfect decision, an we enjoyed out time in Silves, having said that I would love to go back and have more time there.
Our next stop was Foia up in the Serra de Monchique, at 902m its the highest point in the Algarve. You would expect awesome views from here, but sadly the weather had turned and we pretty much drove into a cloud. It became cold, wet and misty - not the best day to be on top of a mountain, but what can you do! Still, there was a wine tasting which was pleasant and a gift shop to look around, so all was not lost. From there we headed to the spa town of Monchique, this was only a brief stop but we had time to wander down into town, take photo's and look in a couple of shops.
It was around 7pm when we arrived back in Albuferia, much later than I had expected and despite the weather it had been a good day. We were both hungry though so we headed to Tiffany's for dinner. That was delicious, and it was a lovely evening. Especially as they insisted on giving us free glasses of wine. Be so rude to say no!
The moral of this story is that coach tours are fine and serve a purpose, you get to see places you would never have seen otherwise. But you have to except that you will never get enough time at any of the stops to see and do all you want to.
No comments:
Post a Comment