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My family and I took a summer vacation to Albufeira in Portugal, and I want to show some of the amazing sights and experiences we had there.
I am going to share a series of posts about this journey so I can do justice to each and every part of the trip.
First, Portugal was not my choice destination as I am not a fan of hot countries. Yes, I was born and raised in Nigeria but I have never been one for heat and intense sunshine. I was outvoted by everyone as always when planning summer breaks, no single person in my family ever wanted to go to a cold country.
I resigned my faith and promised myself to stick to the hotel room and let every one seek their own fun, they are all old enough.
The outward journey to Faro went without a glitch. We had to wait a little for the booked taxi to arrive and take us to the hotel. When he finally arrived it took us less than 40 minutes from Faro Airport to our hotel.
A bit of a hassle at the hotel as the rooms were not together as wanted by us. Being a big hotel the rooms allocated to us were almost a full street apart, I complained.
We are on a family vacation and it won’t be so if the rooms are that apart. But nothing can be done as they were fully booked. We slept like that first night. But we kept going back and our persistence paid off, we got a room closer together on the second day.
How wrong was I? Totally, Albufeira is a photographer’s dream destination. It is so beautiful, I couldn’t stay in the room as I promised myself. My camera came out and I went to work. I couldn’t get enough of the beautiful scenery.
The beautiful Atlantic beaches were a joy to behold. Albufeira is stunning, not just the beaches. The coastline too, the architecture, the vibrancy. Every picture I took was just stunning. Let me not talk too much and let my images and videos tell you exactly what I am talking about.
The heat was brutal though, at least I was right about that. The sun comes out early and fiercely and took me a while to work out a pattern of sticking to the room till around 7 pm when the sunlight is not so fierce.
Needless to say, I had a brilliant time, eat great food, and consumed huge amounts of tonic water, I am still working hard to get the sugar out of my system. I swam. I went on long walks. I also get to read in a very relaxing environment with the sound of the sea waves in the background.
The highlight of this journey is going Parasailing. Oh yes, me! I did it and was so glad of the wonderful opportunity to be able to experience that. Look out for my full post on this amazing experience. Read the complete post and see the videos and pictures here,
I am not able to see much of the Portuguese culture because Albufeira is a tourist destination, which is something I miss most about this journey. I love knowing people’s ways by seeing how they live.
My plan is to go back to Portugal, this time choosing Lisbon, or a more quieter part to see the people and their lives.
Surprisingly, Portuguese architecture is very similar to Nigerian one. They even have a city called Lagos, where they have the slave trade museum.
The flight from Faro Airport back to Dublin was a disaster. It was delayed for more than an hour. We were left standing on the tarmac in the brutal heat for a while.
We got back home close to midnight and the very next day by 8am I was on my way to work. To say I was tired will be an understatement but I am happy.
Will I recommend Portugal to anyone looking to visit? Oh yes, definitely. A beautiful country that shares its type of architecture with Nigeria. Sometimes I feel I am in a part of Lagos state in Nigeria while working through Albufeira.
Please, stick with me as I share my different experiences in a series of posts. Thanks.
Thanks a lot for listening and reading. Please, your contributions to this post will be appreciated in the comment section below. Help by clicking like and sharing with your friends. Also, don’t forget to join other subscribers to receive notifications of new posts by email. I appreciate it.
Stay with me,
Ruka
