Chips on the Strip with the Brits

Okay, so this isn't strictly speaking an Amsterdam Adventure, but it's hard to seek adventures in Amsterdam when you happen to be staying in the Algarve for the whole week. I nevertheless promised a weekly update, so I'm shifting the focus to Portugal for this entry.



Me and my friend Elise have had a great week sunning ourselves on sandy shores and return to Holland feeling nicely relaxed (and a bit chilly). I must admit, when we first arrived I was shocked by the resort (Albufeira) which had to be seen to be believed. Our apartment was slap-bang on 'The Strip' which proudly displayed its neon signs, strip clubs, theme bars, fish and chip shops, Irish pubs, football bars showing Sky TV, and hoards of Brits who seemed dedicated to the job of exposing rolls of white flab. We vowed never again to book a holiday on the internet late at night after we'd downed a couple of bottles of wine. As we lay in our beds at 4am on our first night there, listening to the pounding house music coming from the bars outside and the drunk Dutch boys upstairs shouting and slamming doors, we thought that things couldn't get much worse... until it started to rain.

The next morning we all sat around dejectedly at the 'welcome meeting' sipping our complimentary orange squash (no expense spared there) and trying to look interested as our enthusiastic Dutch rep attempted to sell us excursions. Not an easy thing to do with the rain hammering down on the awning. Fan-bloody-tastic.

Luckily, that afternoon the sun appeared and it was blue skies all the way from there on. We discovered that the 'Old Town' was much nicer and easily accessible by 'fun train' (an entertainment in itself) so we made daily trips there, grabbing our favourite spot on the sandy beach and chilling out with books and i-pods. I got to take regular dips in the ocean (which always makes me a very happy girl indeed) and became a dab-hand at beach tennis. Once we discovered that we could buy mint-choc-chip icecream we suddenly forgot all about our initial concerns and decided that the Algarve was pretty cool after all. Why the Dutch never discovered mint-choc-chip is one of life's little disappointments for me. By the way, the 'noisy Dutch Boys upstairs' left midweek which gave us welcome relief from the 4am 'klompen feestjes' (clog parties... or at least this is what it sounded like).

Away from the Strip we found some great restaurants which provided some mouth-watering seafood (can't get enough of the stuff) all served by lovely friendly people. My marathon training didn't suffer either (but my calves did with all those hills!).

By the end of the week we were laughing about 'The Strip' and had fun making some photo projects there. If you can't beat them, join them...