Helen went for her early morning run as usual (10kms) at some early time in the morning. It was partly cloudy the whole day and a lot cooler today as well (got up to 26 degrees only). It kept looking like it was going to rain but it never did (and doesn’t look like it will now) – though the sunset is quite beautiful with the reflection off the clouds (that is the view from our top balcony).

We didn’t do a lot today. We all went to the Algarve Mall again this morning. I just wanted to buy some ‘hardware’ items like light bulbs, super glue etc so that we could do some maintenance around the house. However, Helen and the girlfriends wanted to do some more clothes shopping and so they stayed on until about 3pm and hopefully completed their Portuguese shopping. Not sure Lara could have any money left after today.

We really didn’t do much else except lounge around, watch TV episodes (in the case of the S, L, M & O), read and lie around the pool. I did some work including having a telephone conference call but that was about it.  Isn’t that a sign of a good, relaxing holiday – just doing very little and unwinding? Michael did have a 30 minute (at least, not kidding) conversation with the gardener (who spoke impeccable English – or at least so says Michael). The gardener told him the previous owner paid €1.5m for the house and then went bankrupt (hence why he had to sell). He also persuaded Michael that we need to trim the trees, put cork into the garden (only in Portugal would you put cork in the garden), change the irrigation system and make various other garden improvements. Michael told him to put it into writing and send it through for my approval!

We had bought what looked like lobster tails for dinner tonight. They turned out to be Lobster Surimi – looks like lobster but made out of a meat paste (and who knows what meat and feels like rubber i.e. not really edible). That is the problem of not being able to read Portuguese and only using a translator on the key word (in this case lobster).  Fortunately we had sausage and chicken as well. Only Stephen and Oli ate any significant amount of it (and well done to them and for that alone they are worthy of a promotion on the blog order of merit).

Until tomorrow …

P, O, S, H, M, L & C