I must confess I wasn’t totally looking forward to our short stay in Albufeira in the Algarve. A good friend had very kindly invited us along to her 50th birthday celebrations, and while we so wanted to celebrate with her, we knew we looked for very different experiences from a vacation.
I anticipate exciting and different travel experiences, and the opportunity to write a good travel review. Our friend meanwhile is much more about having a leisurely doze on the sun bed around a pool, in between short bursts of Barbara Taylor Bradford and a gulp of rapidly warming wasp infested sweet Sangria.
In the end, we decided to get the best of both worlds with a few days in Porto and then Caiscais (near Lisbon), before we braved the Algarve. Unfortunately, these first two places were so lovely; I held a heavy heart by the time it came time to meet up. The Algarve is an area deeply loved, and on the agenda of, many a traditional holidaymaker since the mid 60’s. I was fully expecting gangs of young British yobs and yobetts, interspersed with the more mature Brit looking for some idyllic sunnier vision of what they imagined Britain to be like 40 years ago.
It is true, in part, that I discovered my personal nemesis. The main concentration of bars in Albufeira (tellingly and horrifyingly named "the strip") had its full share of soccer football TV screens, cheap beer offers, and roast Sunday dinners and fish and chips on the menu. The largest pile of British newspapers in the local supermarket was for the Daily Mail (disparagingly known as the "Hate Mail" by British liberals).
However, before I cast the whole place into room 101, I didn’t find Albufeira to be as bad as the hell-on-sea that my mind envisaged. We enjoyed visiting some of the cocktail bars, and some of the restaurants were surprisingly upmarket and good (as my journal tells testament).
I also found that scant parts of the old original town had survived, with old winding streets lined with little whitewashed fisher family cottages. I even spotted right in the centre of the old town "strip", an old farmer sitting in his living room with his front door open, as he must have done 60 years ago. Of course in those days, instead of ritzy bars and tatty kid’s toys shops, fields surrounded him.
I was also surprised that Albufeira wasn’t quite as built up as I had imagined; none of the town is high-rise apartments, although I did spot some white wedding cake tier designed flats on some of the hills. Most apartments and villas were in fairly small groups or even separate plots, and I has to walk between the odd field to hop from bar to bar. The beach area itself is simply a series of very sandy bays, interspersed with rocky cliff headland. Again, this lent to the town giving itself breathing space.
Unfortunately, Albufeira has had a couple of rocky years, as its reputation seems to precede it, and tourists have been moving on in search of resorts that are more sophisticated. The local newspaper was over optimistically shouting of hints of revival as the local hotels claimed towards 50% room occupancy for May.
Albufeira has its fair share of bankrupt and closed down bars and restaurants, and the ones that survive have to be good to keep going. This is particularly true of the edge of town, where "passing trade" is much less. I passed the "Cock and Bull" a sadly peeling "English" bar, proudly proclaiming they were showing all the matches for "Euro 2006". I’m sure the soccer teams playing in the tournament weren’t the only ones with shattered dreams and battered egos. It made me sad, and made me want to like the place.
The real problem I have with Albufeira was that there seemed so little to do. A stall was offering Segways for hire. We were tempted until we realised that all we could do was go round in mindless little circles in the concrete square at the back of the beach. I didn’t really see any serious art shops or museums to explore. I just saw cheap and expensive bars, cheap and expensive restaurants, and the piles pounding on as I staggered and wobbled between the two, and watched others doing likewise.