You’re getting two days in one today. The reason for that will become obvious as you read.  Yesterday was our last day in Vilamoura. Stephen and I went in the morning to buy a cupboard so that we could pack away some of things we bought for the house that didn’t want to leave for everyone else to use. We went to the Algarve Shopping centre and there is a large DIY store there. It has everything and we found a flat pack (actually came in 3 boxes) that could be assembled with just a hammer and screwdriver into a cupboard. So we bought it and a hammer and headed back to make it up.

It took Stephen, Michael and I 2 hours to put it together. #Dadshouldbeimpressed. Though he might be less impressed when he saw the crack between the doors, the nails hammered in skew and the pieces we had left at the end. Anyway, we were chuffed that we managed to follow the pictures and put it together so who really cares about the gap between the doors.

Lunch was made up of leftovers from the last 2 weeks which included a bag of boiled potatoes.  Helen did (fortunately) go and buy some rolls and cold meat to go with the boiled potatoes. The rest of the afternoon was spent packing up and then we all late afternoon piled into the car with our luggage and made our way to Faro airport for our flight back to London. It was a tight fit again with the golf clubs under the kids feet.

We made it safely to the aiport, handed back our car (which took much longer than it has ever taken me to return a car in my life) and checked in. We had been warned that there wasn’t much of a lounge at Faro airport for British Airways so our expectations were quite low but it was actually better than we expected. We still had to go through passport control before we boarded the plane. The guy was very friendly and asked us whether we could speak Portuguese and how long we were going to London for.  When we said only a few days he assumed we were coming back to Portugal again. He never stamped our passports because we have resident permits (unless we wanted him to and I certainly don’t because my passport fills up so quickly).

We boarded and left 10 minutes early and arrived back at Gatwick airport at 11:30pm. The flight was uneventful but it took us a reasonable amount of time to get through passport control because our flight arrived at the same time as a flight from Moscow.  It seemed we were the only non-EU people on our flight because when we did eventually get through passport control the luggage belt was already turned off and out luggage was next to it. First time that has happened to me as well. It was then an hour drive back to London flat and so we got to the flat at 1:10am. We were all tired and so we went to bed but at about 2:30am we were woken up by Michael who was feeling ill and then shortly after that was ill. About 30 minutes later Stephen followed in Michael’s footsteps and the rest of the night was a few hours sleep punctuated by the boys being sick. We can only think it was food poisoning from the meal on BA but Chloe and I had the same meal and we were fine.

The boys spent today recovering, I went to work (in what felt like a jet lagged state) and eventually at midday Helen and Chloe went out shopping. They did buy a few things but the most I heard about was the milkshake at Selfridges that contains cupcakes. You’ll have to ask Chloe for the details.

Now to watch the first semi-final of Brazil v Germany. Helen and I were meant to be out for dinner with clients tonight but we cancelled due to the sickness issue. At least we can now watch the World Cup semi final.

S, M (because I am still feeling sorry for them), P, H & C