You should be used to the pattern by now - every second day, a round of golf. Michael and I had booked our last round in Portugal for 7:30am. It was a bit colder than previous mornings as evidenced by the fact that all the staff at the golf course were wearing jerseys. It was a bit cool but neither Michael nor I would have even considered wearing a jersey. It was an average round of...

Spending the day doing very little is the definition of holiday. That is pretty much what we did yesterday. The whole morning was spent around the house (either inside or next to or inside the pool). Michael cooked us some burgers for lunch which was probably the most active thing done the whole morning (except that Oli and Helen went for a run in the morning). In the afternoon I needed to buy printer ink (yes...

On Monday after our shocking round of golf Michael and I immediately booked the next round at our favourite course in Vilamoura - The Millennium course (http://www.dompedrogolf.com/our-courses/millennium-golf-course.html). While it still has a reasonable number of trees it doesn't have nearly as many as Pinhal and both Michael and I really like the course. We had the first tee off time of the day at 7:30am. It was 16 degrees when we drove to the course and...

Even though I have been to Portugal numerous times now, I still don't understand the place. You drive around and there is a really nice home or building but right next door is total dereliction with graffiti sprayed all over it. It seems a real mixture between first world and third world even though they would only consider themselves to be first world only. Yesterday we needed to drop off our expired residency cards at our...

Michael and I had a tee off at 7:39am on Pinhal Golf Course (http://www.dompedrogolf.com/our-courses/pinhal-golf-course/). Vilamoura has 6 golf courses in the town and Michael and I have played all of them besides one so far.  We have only played Pinhal once before so we decided to play it again as our first course this trip. It was a mistake - there were more pine trees on the course than there are descendants of Abraham (well obviously...

Yesterday was our first full day in Vilamoura. It was pretty warm when we woke up even though it was overcast. You could tell it was going to get quite hot. In the morning we went to do some grocery shopping at Pingo Dolce (one of local supermarkets). It seems though that everyone else in Vilamoura had the same idea because the shop was packed and everyone (admittedly like us to) had brought their families along....

I left last Sunday night for London (to work for a week) but the rest of the family + girlfriend left on Friday night to join me for our mid-year holiday in Europe.  They flew over to London and then had the day to kill before we flew on Saturday afternoon at 4:25pm to Faro, Portugal. Chloe (who is considering studying in the UK) wanted to attend the Kings College open day (that's the photo) which...