Goodbye to pale skin and European accents

This post was first titled Goodbye to pale skin and Pommy accents, but fearful of offending anyone (ie, Poms) I have toned it down. Anyway, we are mostly hearing Irish accents in the Algarve at present; the Poms -oops, I meant to say the English - come next month. It is all a matter of timing around the school holidays, but more on that Pandora's box later.

The view from our villa in Lagos offers a wide vista of dense holiday villas. I am sure that there are some people who live here, but generally these villas are on high rotation, turning around each weekend to welcome in a new family. Resorts and holiday apartments also abound, but being a bigger group we choose to stay in a villa.  The villas all have their own pools which makes for a very blue dotted landscape on Google Earth.

The streets are quaintly named after important personages, a hang over I think from Portugal's authoritian era. And just in case you are ignorant of the famous person who has lent their name to the street the signs helpfully tell you what worthy endeavour the street's namesake excelled in.

The expat English living here are keenly watching the Brexit vote - you know, will Britain stay in the EU: British Exit - got it now ? The debate in Britain centres around issues of security, migrants and jobs and the Daily Mail has cited a right wing political leader who has advised readers to vote for Exit to avoid the mass rapes that will be perpetrated by the hordes of incoming migrants. Conversely the debate among expats abroad centres on what happens to them if the UK leaves. They can now live and work in Europe with little restriction, if Britain votes to leave the EU I wonder if they realise they will have to queue at the airports with the rest of us 'aliens' in the Non-EU queues. 

As established in an earlier post this place gets ridiculously busy in summer, like most of the places the Northern Europeans visit to chase the sun. Some families wishing to avoid the school holiday crush do so by taking the kids out of school for their holidays. Authorities looking to curb this trend introduced penalties for parents who take their children out of school for holidays without the school's permission. It was a hot topic when we were in Britain and an Isle of Wight father who took his daughter out of school to go to Disney World in Florida has won a landmark case in the HIgh Court against the 

education authorities. Three million school days are lost in Britain each year in holiday absences, and frankly my sympathies lie with the teachers who have to juggle the demands of an already overpacked curriculum around the whims of demanding parents who are too precious to holiday with everyone else. To top it off the fine is only 60 quid so why not just pay up - this bloke has already saved a bucket by not having to pay high-season airfares. And while I am being judgmental - Disney World ?? Really. If you are going to remove your children from a week of precious education at least take them somewhere decent!

Fortunately our child travellers are not yet in school so we can avoid high-season travel without any guilt.

Some places are more able to cope than others with a deluge of tourists. We had the misfortune to head to the local restaurant for dinner just after a table of 18 sat down. All week we have gone past this tiny family run place and at best there have been only 2 diners so we thought we would show our support. We waited patiently while the large table was served, the delightful aromas of the char-grill salmon, tuna, chicken and sardines enticing to sit out the long wait. Luckily the TV was playing the Portugal England soccer friendly and we enjoyed loudly supporting the local team, which may have been a bit annoying to the largely English clientele. Sometime into the second half of the game (yes, by this time we have waited an hour) our waiter approached ready to take our order and we were eager to  share with him our request, only to be told that the only food left was one serve of chicken, two serves of mackerel and pizza. Oh well. 

So today we leave the south of Portugal and head to the north to travel through the port wine region and catch up on some history in Lisbon. We will be meeting our English friends who have travelled from Birmingham to journey with us on this next part of our journey. Let's hope they have not read this post, or if they have that they do not take toooo much offence.

We departed the Algarve region via Faro, a quiet town wth no beach, and therefore few tourists. Faro still has its medieval old town in the centre and we wandered through the peaceful quiet streets. Being Sunday the locals were at home enjoying family time and the town was eerily quiet, which was not unpleasant. After siesta these chaps and their dog ventured out to enjoy their card game in the local park - it was nice to end our visit to the south with this little snippet of slower paced Portugal.