Travelogue – Vilamoura, Portugal
One of my old mates was regaling the group of us that went to Portugal on a lads weekend of stories from when we were at nursery school together. We were 4 at the time, I just about remember what I ate for breakfast. I took his word for it.
The rest of our Vilamoura group friendship began at secondary school, although mostly if I’m honest after it as people went their own ways, but this group stuck together, the adhesive being a boys holiday in Bournemouth when we were just 18.
10 of us were in the Algarve town telling old war stories, especially those from our school days. Recollection of those I think had a lot of us recoiling at the memories. Looking back it was a tough environment to go to school in.
Those tales were easily trumped by hilarious retelling of stories from our times together during the past 40+ years.
Vilamoura was purpose built about 25 years ago and has Portugal’s largest marina. The cost and lack of development keeps the riff-raff away and the crowd was a real mix. Mostly golfers, but couples, families and clearly others like us in groups as well. A better class of drunk late into the evenings from what we saw!
The marina is at the heart of almost everything and the boat show that was on this past weekend brought added money, fancy cars and visitors.
The Marina de Vilamoura is overlooked by hotels and villas with lanes running in between and a few roads back but that was the extent of the town that is sandwiched between Faro, the Algarve capital and the much livelier and larger Albufeira, a place I went to a couple of times in the late ‘90’s.
Restaurants lined the marina, four or five of which we ate in, and they were all good. There were bars, and pubs, but nothing too oiky that served sandwiches during the day and late night revellers at night. You can still drink until 5am in some places, allegedly.
At one end of the marina sitting imposingly over it was the Tivoli Marina Hotel, which was very plush. At the other end was Domes Lake, a much more modern hotel and more family friendly. The hotel sits around a large lake and is close to the beacn and the red cliffs of Praia da Falésia.
Vilamoura also has a casino, regular and higher end stores, miles of golden sands and around six golf course in the close vicinty including the Dom Pedro Old Course, known as the “Grande Dame” of the Algarve.
You could not walk through our hotel lobby for golf bags in the morning, and a lot of Irish accents. A couple in our group play, but our daytime activities mostly came down to doing nothing, other than swimming, eating, sipping on the odd Sagres and spinning yarns.
On Saturday morning a few of us did travel the 15km to Loulé in a taxi. Loulé is a lovely little market town tucked away in rolling hills.
Loulé has a castle dating back to the 8th century which you can visit for a coule of euro. Inside there are the remains of three main defence towers, the gate tower and a walkable stretch of the ancient stone ramparts.
The town itself was beautiful and the heartbeat of it was the Municipal Market housed in a striking, 1908 neo-Arab and Art Nouveau building, it offered us a sensory adventure of fresh local produce, a tonne of freshly caught seafood, and regional handicrafts.
Then with it being a Saturday there was a farmer’s market that spilled onto the surrounding streets with fresh local produce. The food stalls started packing up around 2pm, but we were there early enough to witness it in full swing.
All around there were busy shopping streets and a warren of medieval alleys, parks and beautiful traditional houses. A fair few fixer-uppers as well. We were tempted.
There was also a gypsy market which is held close to the Convento Do Santo Antonio, on the western side of the town that added to the vibrancy.
We had a great lunch of sardines, sea bass, chicken and salad at Restaurant Bocage. After lunch we finished our tour by watching big white storks flying in between the moorish chimney stacks and nosed into the traditional coppersmiths and artisans that operate out of tiny hole-in-the-wall workshops. Copper is the souvenir to buy here.
Ideas of an exploration of Faro’s old town on another morning were shelved by hangovers, but the walled medieval quarter and tranquil orange-tree-lined square sounded interesting.
Back in Vilamoura we did eat well. My personal favourites were Restaurant Cesteiro, where there was no menu but you place your order at the fish counter. The News was great for people watching and the group’s favourite meal was at Il Lamparo.
So, all back to normal now. Some of us are back at work, some back to their retirement hobbies, but plans are under discussion for the next boys jaunt.
