Albufeira – Inatel Beach November 11th

A cloudy day, 18ºC, and it rained hard a couple of hours later!

Sunset Albufeira 9th November 2018

Just grabbed this out of the window as the sun went behind the hill.

Some views over Albufeira

It was a fairly nice day yesterday. These are pictures taken from the hill known as ‘Bem Parece’ behind where I live. Taken using small camera.

The first shows the Eden Resort in the foreground with the white buildings of Clube Albufeira to the middle right. This is looking north towards the hills.

This is the Caliços area to the north of the old town alongside the N395 road to Ferreiras.

And now looking east across the bay to the red cliffs of Falesia beach and the white towers of Vilamoura and Quarteira. The red building just to the right of centre is the Aqua Pedras dos Bicos hotel in Oura.

Albufeira local wildlife

Well perhaps not really wildlife as they are behind a fence, but I was totally unaware of them until yesterday! Location about 1km from where I live.

A rare bit of sun!

The Cerro Branco area of Albufeira seen from the other side of the old town centre. The trees are those in the square.

Albufeira October 24 2018

It was a bit misty but here’s a couple of pictures taken from high up on Cerro D’Aguia, to the west of town near where I live.

The Cerro da Piedade or Windmill hill area.

And the Montechoro area showing the Hotel Jupiter (formerly the Hotel Montechoro), Vila Magna and on the right Janelas do Mar.

And some of the open countryside behind where I live. This picture was taken from the roof of an abandoned farmhouse, to which this land probably once belonged.

 

Visit to Vila Real de Santo António

Took a worthwhile trip from Albufeira to the border town of Vila Real de Santo António (VRSA) on Saturday. My main reason for the journey was to see my local football team in action there but by co-incidence the weekend was also the occasion of the annual festival in VRSA. The whole of the main road is closed off to allow dozens of market stalls, fairground rides and food sellers to set up shop. And to add to that is the regular Saturday morning antiques market, so a very busy day. The town was teeming with people, many of them from across the river in Spain. Restaurants and bars were doing a roaring trade.

Upside was a 1-0 win for my team and the purchase of a decent camera tripod for €10 at one of the ‘junk’ stalls.

Downside was the serious vandalism on the trains I took. As (bad)luck would have it, the same train was used for all four legs of my trip. It had been so badly smothered in graffiti that most of the windows were completely painted over, making it impossible to see out. As there are no announcements (audible or visual) on these trains several people were left wondering where they were!

This is said train on arrival at Vila Real.

and this is the INSIDE!

Unfortunately the railway has no secure overnight storage facilities and does not seem to believe in security at all, so the trains are left out in the open at the mercy of the local schoolchildren. They wonder why people are reluctant to use them!

On a better note, the town’s festivities were very popular on a sunny day.

Some more pictures here.