Friday afternoon and just back from a brilliant week away down in Albufeira, in the Faro District of the Algarve Region, in southernmost Portugal. After a week of brilliant blue skies and nice hot sunny weather we were welcomed home to clouds and dull grey skies, but at least it's not raining and it's fairly mild outside. Anyway, we were up last Friday morning at around 4 and headed off to Gatwick Airport to get our early flight out to Faro, a 40 minute taxi ride away from Albufeira. We'd both been wanting a good chilled out beach and sun holiday for ages, so this break couldn't come soon enough.

After checking into Hotel California along Rua Candido dos Reis Bar Street, we met up with the Boss and Biddy who had arrived a few hours later than us. Then the rest of the week involved much of the same - sun, beach, swims in the sea, lunch time beers, afternoon ice-creams, good eating and a lot of sleeping on the sunbeds. Can't really complain about any of that :)

We did manage on two occasions to get up for sunrise which unfortunately didn't come up behind the ocean bit still good to get up early for it. On the Monday we headed west out to Praia da Rocha for the day and made good use of their sunbeds out there. Then on Wednesday I decided to have a go on the jetski which left me wanting more and considering buying one! So much fun :)

For lunch and dinner we generally stuck to the same few favourites - Cabana Fresca, the beach cafe and Mi Sombrero, as well as visiting the Atrium for dinner and the Portuguese band and Casa Del Mar for an amazing night of seafood.

To finish off the week, we decided to book a sunset sailing cruise last night which sailed from the Albufeira Marina out to the Benagil Cave and back again. Since there was a westerly wind we used the motor to get out to the cave and then raised the main sail and the spinnaker for the journey back, while the sun slowly set behind us. An awesome evening to end the holiday.

This morning we were up fairly early to get our taxi to Faro in time for our flight back to Gatwick, looking nicely tanned and feeling relaxed. As much as we're both sad the beach holiday's over, at least we still have another couple of days of the weekend ahead of us so it's not quite the very end of the holiday just yet!