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...