Day 6 in Vilamoura
June 29, 2014

My family (my biggest critics of course) are complaining my blogs are very short. My response was that it is because we have done very little every day. That’s not a complaint – it is just a fact. We are all quite enjoying the chilled holiday. Just reading, sleeping (the kids are doing enough of that for the whole family), golfing, cycling, occasional visit to the shops, swimming, watching football and a little bit of sightseeing.

The Reders left us today. They are going to Espana for the next week. Helen and Chloe decided to go shopping today. For obvious reasons the male members of the family weren’t excited by that prospect so we let them go by themselves (fortunately Helen has braved driving a manual car on the right side of the road). Portugal is at least not like France – the shops are open on Sunday. They went to the Algarve Shopping Mall.  The boys and I stayed and watched House. House is one of our favourite series and the wonders of modern technology mean we can even watch it in Portugal and fortunately not in Portuguese.  Our Portuguese has not improved much (or at all) while we have been here.  Most of the reason is that everyone speaks English and they don’t even bother to try and talk Portuguese to you, so we really haven’t made much of an effort (though we probably should).

We are also amazed how reasonable Portugal is – cost wise that is.  The food is not significantly different in price to South Africa. Helen and Chloe said they also found the clothes to also be reasonably (and in some cases cheaply) priced. After loafing around this afternoon – Helen sunbathed while Stephen and I watched football and Michael and Chloe caught up with their lack of sleep – we went for dinner at the Marina.

If ymarina dinnerou’re wondering what the weather was like – don’t – it was the same as yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that. 28C with a light breeze, not a cloud to be seen. It doesn’t seem like the weather will be any different for the rest of our time here either. We had a leisurely dinner at the Marina at one of the many restaurants right on the side of the water. No one is ever in a hurry in Portugal and the service was pretty leisurely (most other times & places I would have complained – not so here, I am different person). We weren’t in much of hurry except that some of us were getting hungry. Most of our time was consumed discussing how much it must cost to own a yacht of the type you see in the photo. Michael found out (thank goodness for Google) that they range in price from $500k to $5m – either way it is a lot of money considering you still need to pay for berthing.  By the time we had finished there were a lot more people at the Marina and things were just about to start get going again it seems. There are numerous bars.  We even saw one that stays open to 6am. You can see they are catering for the English tourists (of which there are numerous) – you can tell them by their lobster looks.

We got back just in time for the start of the next football game. I don’t think Stephen has missed a minute of any of them except when we were on a plane. I think he might go through withdrawal at the end of the World Cup. Not sure what he will do with his time.

Until tomorrow … P, H, M, S & C (M gets promoted because he criticized my posts the least)

One thought on “Day 6 in Vilamoura

  1. Pingback: Hubert

Leave your comments...