The 4 Seasons (not that one)

So on Saturday April 6th, we rented a car and drove to the Algarve in Southern Portugal. The plan was to stay for a couple of nights and then take a bus to Seville, Spain – we didn’t want to deal with the hassle and costs of flying and thought this could be a fun travel experience. A couple of hours of booking.com research led us to The 4 Seasons Vilamoura. For ~$200 USD per night, they offered a 2 bedroom apartment that looked pretty nice in the photos as well as 4 swimming pools (1 of which was inside as frequently pointed out by Lincoln…). We are always a little nervous when we get to a new place since you can never know if it will be great or terrible. In this case, it was nothing like the luxury Four Seasons brand we know back home, but it was still pretty great and just what we needed.

The apartment was huge and super comfortable. It even has a washer AND a dryer! We have learned that dryers are not very common which makes getting clothes washed challenging when you are moving around as much as we have been. This let us get all caught up on laundry.

And, the area around the hotel was cool… it was like a condo village that seemed to be full of a combination of retirees and families, mostly from the UK. It was very pretty to walk around.

And there were a handful of cafes that offered international food. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible.

This was the first time it felt like being on vacation. The weather also improved a lot – ~70 degrees a sunny. We decided to extend a night and came away fully recharged and ready for Spain on Tuesday.

We wouldn’t likely come back here, but it was a nice change from the big cities we’ve mostly been staying in and interesting to see it. In general, we are glad to have spent more time in Portugal, but aren’t sold on it’s value prop… The Algarve feels a bit like Mexico, but without many beaches and without great Mexican food. I suppose if you live in Europe Mexico isn’t a very viable vacation option, but with amazing options like Spain, France, Italy, etc, nearby and similarly priced, we wouldn’t likely come back to southern Portugal. Porto we liked a lot on a prior trip, Lisbon was not our favorite (as discussed in prior post). Onward to Spain!