Algarve

June 13-16, 2023

By Hector Gonzalez

June 18^th, 2023

I promised the kids we could go to a nice water park in Portugal, without realizing it was in some place called the Algarve a solid two hours away from Lisbon. But it did look like a nice water park, so we decided to make a little trip of it. Three nights on the southern coast of Portugal to see whatever there was to see. This is the only picture I took of the water park, because it is weird to take pictures at a water park. But we had an awesome time. Best water park I've ever been to.

Then we went to our hotel, located in the village of Carvoeiro. This was the view from the grounds. We also made a friend right away. Handsome guy. Eventually he stole a whole pack of crackers but it was a fun friendship while it lasted.

In the morning I took a bike ride to Carvoeiro's downtown beach. The hills were brutal and I nearly blacked out going back to my hotel so I didn't bike there again. But our seagull friend did come back to share breakfast with me. This was before he stole the crackers.

We found a ropes course and of course had to go.

The ropes course included a paintball game. I'm not into guns at all, but the boys wanted to try and this nice British family needed two more players to make it work. So here are the boys, shooting at strangers. Julian was praised for being stealthy.

For a town the size of a decent bag of potato chips, Carvoeiro has at least three beautiful beaches. We liked this one the best.

A pirate ship went by and we all made Goonies references.

Just unreal beauty. The water was cold but not what the boys refer to as "Sagamore cold."

And then we took a three-hour tour (I know) along the coast. Our guides were charming, the water was fantastic (heck yeah we swam in it), and the coastline was...well, take a look. Oh, and there were dolphins in the water.

We took a hike along the coast to Carvoeiro, and then the seagull friend stole our crackers and then it was time to go, but we are daydreaming now of living on the coast of Portugal.