movingtoportugal

So, it’s all over for another year. Time to dust off the laptop, and the running shoes, and return to normality.

We had a wonderful Christmas here in the Algarve and I think and hope that the extended and blended family we had with us enjoyed it as much as we did. I should give a special mention to my mother who conquered a forty-year fear of flying to make it here which made it all the more special.

Tavira at Christmas

Along with all our other wonderful gifts, my mother also brought a nasty flu-bug with her, which struck down 90% of us shortly after the big day, but at least we avoided the bugs until after the main event.

With fingers firmly crossed, I can report that so far although the Algarve weather has been mixed, we haven’t experienced the constant rain of last winter. In fact some days have been glorious. On boxing day (26th December,) we showed some of the family the beautiful hamlet of Cecela Velha (see photo below.) The following morning I was struggling to work out why my nose and forehead was dry and sore, until my wife pointed out I was mildly sun-burned – not what you expect straight after Christmas.

Moving into 2011, we unfortunately have to dedicate a lot more time to the more infuriating parts of Portuguese life – dealing with accountancy, tax and other hateful things – so expect a couple of grumpy, rant-filled posts in the coming weeks. My other big objective is to lose some more weight – I still seem to be in the Weight Watchers mind-set, so health and fitness is top of my new-year agenda, or at least they are once I finish eating my way through mount-chocolate in the living room – how dull and unoriginal!

Only time for a quick post today, so I will leave you with a few snaps of Christmas, Algarve style. Bom Ano Novo (Happy New Year!)

Flamingoes in the Ria Formosa, 23rd December 2010

View from Cacela Velha, Boxing Day, 26th December 2010

Montegordo Sunset, New Year's Day 2011

If you are in the mood for some more Algarve Christmas photos take a look at this post at Food and Wine Portugal!

Technorati Tags: cacala velha, christmas portugal, new year portugal

What a difference a 2.5 hour flight makes. This time last week I was shivering my way around a -3C London and now I’m back in Portugal it’s 19C outside and bright enough to give me a migraine!

Our trip back to England was the usual mix of good, bad and ugly. The good = Christmas meals and drinks with family and friends. The bad = coping with city crowds and being sneezed over by those with colds and bugs. The ugly = negotiating weather delays and engineering works on public transport.

After a fantastic start to our UK trip, when we visited family in the country, our first 24 hours in London provoked in us the kind of strong feelings of anger and frustration that we

A Snowy Arrival in England

moved to Portugal to get away from. In retrospect I’m glad that I resisted the temptation to post on the blog to relieve my annoyance last Sunday evening, as I fear I may have offended everyone I know who lives in England’s capital!

After the initial anger subsided, which was primarily caused by a public transport journey of epically crap proportions, we relaxed into London life for a few days, and, as always, had some good and memorable times with friends. We also destroyed the majority of the good work our Weightwatchers stint had achieved by tucking into vast quantities of fish and chips, cider and curry, along with a plethora of pastry-based products.

After a rather expensive check-in back at Gatwick airport, thanks to Easyjet’s kind decision to massively reduce the weight limit for our suitcase, we boarded our plane back to Faro, and spent a bumpy couple of hours being entertained / annoyed by a gaggle of hen party visitors, before arriving back in Portugal.

As we have to return to the UK at regular intervals, the moment we arrive back from one visit is always fantastic, as it means there’s plenty of time before we have to think about doing it all again, and our travel plans this time round meant we arrived back with a weekend ahead of us.

After a Saturday of unpacking and settling, my Outlook calendar bleeped and reminded me of a Christmas market in the beautiful hamlet of Cacela Velha taking place the next day—a reminder I had set a long time ago when I heard about it on one of the expat forums.

We gathered the family on Sunday morning and spent a wonderful morning browsing stalls of local handicrafts, cakes, jams, plants and wine. We left having indulged in artisan quiche and honey pastries, not to mention a couple of freebie glasses of local wine, and by then had a few carrier bags between us containing treats which may well appear on the Christmas table or in certain family Christmas stockings…..

After the market we took the family to show them the town of Vila Real de Santo Antonio, right on the Spanish border. We are fans of this very likeable town, which, unusually for the area, is built on a grid system, just like downtown Lisbon.

Christmas Model Village in Vila Real de Santo Antonio

The town boasts a number of individual shops which are great for a browse, including kitchen stores, large linen emporiums, and even a large shop dedicated to Christmas decorations. We alternated wanders around the shops with sit-downs and rest stops at a couple of cafes – a fantastic way to spend a Sunday.

An extra treat was coming across a huge model village that had been constructed specially for Christmas. This free-to-enter exhibit was truly impressive with a breathtakingly intricate level of detail. I heartily recommend that anyone in the East Algarve area go and take a look.

Our relaxed weekend was the perfect antidote to the frenetic pace of our time in the UK, and served as a perfect reminder of why we moved to Portugal. Later that evening, as I sprinkled lemon thyme over our roasted vegetables, procured cheaply from the market that morning, I felt ever so happy. Home sweet home.

Technorati Tags: cacela velha, christmas algarve, christmas in portugal, christmas market, vila real de santo antonio

Tomorrow, all being well, we’re off to England for some pre-Christmas family festivities (yay,) and some work appointments (boo!)

For once we are looking forward to the trip back a little bit, helped by the fact the first thing we will be doing on arrival is shopping for and cooking a full traditional English Christmas dinner.

We are also really looking forward to seeing some of the snow everyone is talking about. We’re not bothered about seeing a lot (too much of it may mean the airport is closed,) but we really hope to see some, as there is almost zero chance of ever seeing any in the Algarve (though I’m sure I have read somewhere that snow has once fallen on the Algarve’s beaches – maybe someone could clarify?)

London in the Snow

I’m not sure how prepared I am for the cold. Now we have acclimatised to the weather in Portugal, anything under 18C seems distinctly chilly, and we are surprised that after just a year, we have, as we wondered we might, joined the native Portuguese people in wearing jumpers and jeans as soon as the mercury goes below 20C, and looking in bemusement at tourists in shorts and flip-flops. We were those people just a year ago—it turns out just one year in a warmer climate is all it takes to lose that hardy British resilience to meteorological hardship!

So, for this visit to the UK we have already been packed for two days, needing to make sure we could fit thick coats and jumpers into our meagre Easyjet baggage allowance along with the family Christmas gifts.

Now all we have to do is head off tomorrow and hope the airports are open, and also keep fingers firmly crossed that we don’t catch any of the myriad colds and bugs that everyone seems to have in the UK at the moment – lots of vitamin C on the menu today…

So…..England again–these trips come around so/too fast. As ever I am excited to see people, but at the same time can’t wait to be back here in Portugal—home for Christmas.

Seasons greetings

Photo credit: John Curnow

Technorati Tags: expat visiting home, london in winter, snow in london

Having just spent the weekend making mince pies and experimenting with Christmas recipes and home-made gifts, our excitement about our upcoming Portuguese Christmas has reached a rather high level. In fact waking up this morning to find it is still over a month away and that we both have a load of work to do was rather depressing.

This will be our second Christmas in Portugal and we now have a lot of family members either here or visiting—if fact it will probably be the biggest Christmas family gathering I have experienced.

I am very much looking forward to all the usual things – watching cheesy movies, eating far too much junk-food and playing board games, not to mention enjoying the one day of the year when drinking champagne first thing in the morning is a cause for celebration rather than concern!

This year, we would also like to try to incorporate some more Portuguese traditions into our Christmas in Portugal.

I’m not going to do the bacalhau (salted cod) on Christmas eve thing, but will be attempting to cook it between now and Christmas, having made a commitment to a reader of the blog to do so

A Portuguese Christmas - Lisbon at Christmas

I will also be attempting to cook a Bolo Rei (a Portuguese Christmas / New Year cake.) I understand from research that the tradition is to incorporate a medal or ring in the mixture as well as a dried broad bean. The person finding the medal is the lucky prize winner and the person finding the bean is responsible for paying for the cake the following year.

I have eaten bolo rei before and found it very tasty and full of seasonal spice flavour, but always somewhat dry, so I will see what I can do to make a slightly more moist version of this festive food.

Finally, we also have a small nativity scene ready to form part of our traditional Portuguese Christmas decorations. Nativity scenes are a seemingly essential part of any Portuguese Christmas.

So, those are our outline plans to make Christmas a little more Portuguese, but I would love to hear from readers in response to this post.

What are your Christmas traditions? If you live abroad have you started to incorporate local customs into your celebrations? And, most importantly, which Portuguese traditions should I learn about that I haven’t already?

I hope to hear some ideas. Now, I have to try to stop thinking about Christmas and get on with some work. Seasons greetings, and have a good week.

Photo credit: Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves

Technorati Tags: christmas in portugal, christmas traditions, portuguese christmas

Its visitors time again! We have just spent an action-packed long weekend with my niece, albeit one which was shunted forward by a day due to striking air traffic controllers, and have only had today to catch up on work and cleaning duties before two friends arrive on the early flight tomorrow. As soon as they leave we are off to England for a work trip. These are hectic times and sure to make my blogging a little more sporadic, so I apologise for that in advance.

My niece’s visit was tremendous fun, and, as she is more of an active soul that the majority of our visitors, her visit was both good for us and a little tiring

Saturday was spent driving to and wandering around Seville, somewhere that, having visited before, we managed to feel we had “done” quite well in just one long and tiring day. Seville

Seville bullring

was as oven-hot as ever and we ate tapas, drank sangria and took photos of many beautiful buildings. It also seemed to be a huge day for weddings in the stunning Spanish city – we saw numerous brides and wedding parties and sat having a drink next to one reception where my niece particularly enjoyed a live rendition of “I will survive.” Cheesy wedding music is not country-specific it seems!

On Sunday we went ocean kayaking on the Ria Formosa, setting off from Praia De Faro, just next to the airport. Although I am not exactly Mr Sporty, I had a fantastic day despite pulled muscles and various scrapes and bruises. I am very keen to do this again – my wife is less so! Struggling with her kayak she ended up being towed by the support boat – her own rather humiliating version of the pope-mobile.

The trip was great – a morning of kayaking with a quick stop for swimming, some more kayaking out to the white sands of the Ilha Deserta, followed by a good picnic lunch, beer and snorkelling. This was followed by a rather more difficult journey back, against both tides and winds. At various points we all opted for a quick tow on the back of the support boat. You are advised to use your stomach muscles for propulsion – sadly after my second lunchtime beer my stomach muscles decided they had had enough!

Kayaks near Ilha Deserta Faro

I would really recommend this kayak trip to anyone of a sporting persuasion but would point out that we were the only people on the trip who hadn’t kayaked before and little concession was made for our status as beginners – perhaps worth taking into consideration if, like my wife, you have no intention of become a kayaking expert, you just fancy a fun day out.

After a barbecue and early(ish) night we stayed local on Monday, first taking my niece to see the “secret” waterfall of Pego Do Inferno, where there were no more than 10 other people present. We then took off on a favourite walk of mine, which consists of taking a boat to the Ilha De Tavira and walking the 4 miles or so to Barril beach. This is such a pleasurable walk and one where we saw jellyfish, a (suspected) dolphin and even a seahorse!

September is certainly a wonderful time to visit the Algarve. The weather is still fabulous, albeit slightly cooler and more comfortable, and the streets, shipping centres and beaches all feel almost private. This was emphasised when we visited my favourite tourist zone, Praia Da Rocha, on Tuesday. By sunset we had the beach to ourselves and the main tourist “strip,” which was a hellish land of chavs and sunburned tourists just a month ago, was a very chilled, moonlit spot to stroll and choose a restaurant for dinner.

Outside one bar in Praia Da Rocha I heard someone talking about the beach. He was referring to Praia de Tres Castelos, at the western end of Praia Da Rocha. He was a tattooed,

Sunset on Praia de Rocha

masculine type – not who you would expect to hear saying to his wife “it was so beautiful down there it made me have a good cry.” It really warmed my heart to know the effect the natural beauty of this place can have on people. We are very lucky to be here, and, now summer is over, it feels like we have got OUR Algarve back. Happy days.

Technorati Tags: algarve exploring, algarve holidays, kayaking, kayaking algarve, kayaks

Firstly, a quick apology to anyone who may have been offended by last weeks article when I told readers of my blog about my scary experience on a banana boat. I was unaware, until a couple of friends contacted me from England, that someone had been killed on one of these in the UK last weekend, and my article may have come across as a little insensitive.

I wasn’t aware of what had happened in England and, had I been, I would have chosen different subject matter. My sympathies go to the family of the person who was killed.

The temperature here in the Algarve is dropping a little now as we get into autumn, and I can’t quite believe how fast the summer passed us by.

The past week was a busy one, with several evenings spent assisting our family members who now live a short drive away. We’ve had fun exploring their new place and enjoyed the feeling of looking at where we live through fresh eyes, which always happens when we are showing people round.

In fact it was a really pleasant week, despite being so busy. Until Saturday night…..

Cooking tasty sardines in an outdoor kitchen, I fried the last couple in a pan as the barbecue was starting to lose its heat. As I transferred the cooked sardines to a serving platter, I

Hot oil - ouch...

somehow managed to deposit the sizzling hot oil all over my right hand.

For those in any doubt, second degree burns hurt a fair bit, and sleeping with one’s hand suspended in a bowl of water is challenging (though somewhat amusing to my wife who saw me scratch my face in the night and splash water over myself.) I am pleased to report that having your hand in cold water while you are asleep does NOT, as the urban myth claims, make you wet yourself, or at least not in my case!

I now have a rather fetching series of blisters and am having to do a lot of things with my left hand (certainly providing readers with plenty to giggle childishly about this week aren’t I?!)

So, other than to say we have two lots of visitors lined up for the next two weeks and lots of activates planned, including kayaking around the Ria Formosa, which I am very much looking forward to, I am going to stop typing for today, as it hurts a little bit! Back next week with tales of our adventures.

Technorati Tags: burned hand, frying pan, living in portugal

Last weekend here in the Algarve was a good one. It was lovely to have a car again after feeling rather isolated at times in our little town.

On Saturday we ventured out and headed west to Praia da Gale, just past the tourist mecca of Albufeira. We were pleased that even here, the crowds had subsided and it did just feel

Praia da Gale

like a busy Saturday.

Praia da Gale is a west-facing beach with the signature orange cliffs, typical of this end of the Algarve, with just a few beach restaurants. One of these, actually just called Praia De Gale, we enjoyed on our last visit. We had exactly the same light lunch – bread, olives, clams and white wine. Simple and delicious and some of the best clams we have had this summer.

The only difference to our last (off-season) visit to Gale was that the sands were almost completely covered in sunbeds and sunshades for hire. Although this detracted from the natural beauty of the beach it gives us more reasons to come back to these places when the weather is not so good later in the year.

One “benefit” of the touristy stuff being there still was a small watersports hire company down one end of the beach. While we swam, we noticed a young couple climbing onto a long yellow banana boat. Riding one of these things, which is pulled along ridiculously fast by a boat in front, has been one of those things we have always intended to do, so completely on the spur of the moment we ran to the hut and asked if we could take a couple of the spare seats.

Five minutes later, we are bouncing along the open sea, in my particular case hanging on for dear life. Maybe I am getting old but I have to say it was just a little bit too much! Perhaps because there were only adults on the banana, the people driving the boat made no concessions for fear – particularly when they manoeuvred the boat in such a way as to deliberately send us all flying off the boat and into the deep water.

Banana Boat - Terrifying

My wife thoroughly enjoyed the experience, despite having to be helped back onto the boat after we were all thrown into the sea, so I was a little embarrassed to admit I was counting down the seconds until we got back to the shore. It would be wrong to say I didn’t enjoy it at all, because it was certainly an experience, but my favourite part was when we were near enough to the beach that I could dive off the thing and swim back to solid ground.

I held on so tight to the boat that it was a couple of hours before my arms stopped shaking and the vibrations of the boat seem to have pulled every muscle I have. I am still, two days on unable to straighten my arms, or open the terrace doors without wincing!

After Praia Da Gale we headed to the Apolonia supermarket. Expats tend to have very strong opinions on Apolonia as there is really nothing remotely Portuguese about this upscale establishment that exists to sell expensive imported products to wealthy tourists. However, we make no excuses, we were celebrating our eleven year anniversary on Saturday and fancied a treat – and for that purpose, this cross between Waitrose and Harvey Nichols food halls is the perfect place. I will be posting a report on Apolonia over at Food and Wine Portugal, later in the week.

On Sunday we headed over to the new property that has been purchased by our relatives, who are, as I type, driving down to the Algarve through Spain, having just arrived on the Santander ferry.

We were greeted by the old owners – truly lovely people who reminded us of one of the biggest reasons we wanted to move to Portugal in the first place. They had left the place beautifully for when our family arrive and I am so excited for them to be starting their own Portuguese adventure in a few hours.

On the way home we had a quick beer overlooking the fishing boats on the sparkling sea in the village of Santa Luzia.

On return home I must confess to reading an English Sunday paper, something I promised myself I wouldn’t do once I moved here, that has now returned to being part of my Sunday

Roast leg of lamb

routine!

We finished a really special anniversary weekend with a leg of lamb we procured from Apolonia. It was very good indeed, especially after experiences of a lot of rather tasteless lamb we have come across since we have been here. My wife has already said this is what she wants to eat again on her birthday. Luckily, given the prices in Apolonia, that isn’t for a few months!

Have a good week!

Images credits: Jun Acallador, Filipe Rocha, dps

Technorati Tags: algarve beach, apolonia, banana boat ride, moving to portugal, portugal supermarket, praia da gale, roast lamb

Once again some visitors have left and home feels strangely empty – we are, however, getting a bit more used to the transition!

This time we had some family over and spent a wonderful week doing the tourist bit in the local area.

As well as our trip to Zoomarine, which I wrote about in a previous post, we have visited beaches, stopped at numerous cafes and restaurants for sustenance and experimented with two new modes of transport….

A pedalo on the sea, complete with an inbuilt slide, was tremendous fun and a whole lot less straightforward than you would expect! When you take into account waves, currents and everything being extremely slippery, it is a wonder that we returned from the experience with only minor injuries – all completely worth it for being able to splash into the sea in heat.

Even more exciting was our experience on the electric mopeds they currently have for rent on the seafront at Cabanas. These machines have pedals so are ridden like a bike but also

Electric Moped - fun

have an electric motor and a couple of compartments to store shopping. As they are classified as bikes, you are allowed to ride them on the Ecovia cycle routes, keeping you away from the Portuguese traffic.

This is a fantastic and very eco-friendly means of transport and ideal for little trips to the local shops where we live…we are looking into the possibilities of getting two of our own and look forward to a more extended trial of the bikes having booked a half-day on them later in the week.

Pego Do Inferno

As always it made us appreciate where we live all the more having people to share it with us – a particular highlight being the beautiful waterfall of Pego Do Inferno, where we all swam in the cool water, and a couple of our number worked up the courage to swing from a rope by the waterfall into the water below. This magical place is slightly off the tourist track and so good to visit in the summer.

We have certainly noticed it is VERY busy around these parts now – some beaches, such as Montegordo and Praia Verde are ludicrously busy, and when we visited the latter yesterday we had to queue long enough to get out of the car park to warrant a game of “I-Spy” in the car! We have identified one local beach that gets largely bypassed by the worst of the crowds, and I’m afraid I am unwilling to disclose which one it is

So, once again, back to work and reality after sharing another holiday with some more visitors – time to get the house clean and tidy, go and see how much beer is left in the fridge, and look forward to the next arrivals. Happy days.

Technorati Tags: ecovia algarve, electric moped, holidays, pego do inferno, praia verde, swimming, swimming in waterfall

We have family visiting us at the moment and they kindly treated us to a day at Zoomarine Algarve.

Zoomarine is a sea-life based theme park near Albufeira, with an aquarium, water and fairground rides along with various animal shows.

I’ll start my report with a word about dolphins. Until I mentioned on my Facebook wall that I had been to a dolphin show which attracted several comments, I was unaware that a lot of people see these shows as being inhumane.

Zoomarine Algarve - Dolphins

Now I can’t say for certain, as I struggle to speak Portuguese, let alone dolphin, but the affinity the trainers seemed to have with these dolphins was both touching and awe-inspiring. One section when the dolphins pulled the trainers through the water by their feet, following by lots of affectionate cuddles with the dolphins truly brought a tear to the eye. I must say that from what I saw, it certainly appeared that the dolphins and trainers shared a lot of love and the dolphins seemed to love performing.

I may be wrong about all this, and it may be that other places like this do not treat the dolphins correctly, but everything I saw at Zoomarine seemed to be about caring for the animals and the environment – if it IS inhumane they hide it well – anyone with evidence to the contrary, please tell me and I won’t go back!

Anyway, back to the point. After the dolphin show, which really blew us away, we had a good look round and went on the basic but fun fairground rides, including a big wheel which terrified my dear wife!

The aquarium wasn’t the biggest one I have ever seen but was enjoyable – I can spend hours happily looking at fish. We also went on the water rides and spent a while sitting by the inviting, but hugely busy swimming pools.

Food was the typical theme-park junk food, but, very surprisingly, sold at prices that weren’t a huge rip-off – a very welcome break from the norm.

All in all, a lovely day with the family at a place that didn’t rip you off, and accommodated the crowds fairly well, aside from the scrum just before the dolphin show – this isn’t the place for adrenaline filled theme park rides but for a great day out with a lot of variety I do recommend Zoomarine.

Photo credit: The Admiralty

Technorati Tags: dolphin shows, dolphins, zoomarine, zoomarine algarve, zoomarine dolphins, zoomarine portugal

Algarve Banana Tree

As promised last week, today we have a guest post from a good friend who visited us last week. Our guest plans to move abroad some day so her visit was as much a fact-finding trip as a holiday – weighing up whether or not Portugal is somewhere she may one day like to live.

As someone who has been thinking about leaving the UK for a while now, going to see friends who have made that big leap and moved to Portugal was a great place to start. Having people who can show you some of Portugal’s best hotspots was definitely rewarding. I did look at the week as a holiday but at the same time everything I did made me ask myself, could I do this all year round?

Once I got to my friends’ place, the fact that it looked like a holiday apartment was nothing new but seeing their photos and home comforts scattered around made me realise that they actually do live here now and this is life for them.

They were telling me all the things that they had been doing and all the places I could visit while I was there as we sat on the balcony until midnight. The enthusiasm in their voices made me realise that not only were they very happy to be here but also excited about sharing this new experience with me, which made me just as excited as they were.

On the first day, as I stepped out onto the balcony, the first thing that hit me wasn’t the heat, as you might expect, but the brightness. Not a cloud in the sky (which was a brilliant blue) and the glare from the white buildings around me made me think twice before opening the blinds without sunglasses again. I did think to myself in the first two days could I live with this heat and glare? But after those two days it was not a problem and as I write this blog back in London under a sky covered in cloud, there isn’t anything I miss more.

In one week we managed to visit five different beaches, all with their own individual pros. We swam in the sea and even that was a different experience at each beach, whether it was the

Approaching Isla de Tavira

change in the water temperature or just the way the waves moved depending on the tide. The sand was different each time too and the journeys getting to the beaches were just as unique. We walked, we got onto boats and for one, we got a small train which took us across a nature reserve and stopped just at the sand. By the end of the trip it seemed like I’d been on several different holidays at once and this was one of my favourite things about Portugal.

Although my friends hardly had a bad word to say about leaving London, I did think to myself while I was here: would I miss this and would I miss that? As my friends said, friends and family are a given but you make new friends wherever you go and ones that matter will always want to come to visit, even from the UK. I have to admit that most of the people we met, whether English, Portuguese or Spanish, were so friendly and after a few years living in London this was a delight to me.

The choice in the supermarket is much more exciting abroad as there is so much you haven’t tried, while so much of things you already know and love are available too. On the last night we were there, we went for a Chinese and I thought to myself, Chinese in Portugal? But it was the nicest Chinese I’ve ever eaten and with a large choice of restaurants and bars, I was never going to miss the food from back home.

Algarve Summer Sky

One night when we slightly over did it and needed a bit of a break the next day: we watched DVDs and TV and if it weren’t for the Portuguese sub-titles I would have thought I was resting in the comfort of my own home. The Portuguese subtitles, although easy to ignore, do help you pick up a lot of the language without even noticing and that is only another good thing!

All in all, I am still keen to leave the UK and at present, Portugal is a very high contender for the top spot of places to go. It definitely helps that if you already have good friends there that will make you feel welcome, it makes it easy for me to go back anytime I need to see more and experience as much as I can before making that big decision! Portugal for me was 10/10.

Technorati Tags: algarve beaches, algarve summer, guest post, moving to portugal