Monica Isabel

We have been back from our three day trip to the Costa del Sol,  Granada (the Alhambra, and the main reason for the adventure) and Córdoba, which we almost missed - more on that later.

The trip was very good and, thankfully, the weather during our day at the Alhambra was excellent! I took over 350 photos at the Alhambra. another 60 or so at the mosque in Córdoba and a few at a small town near the Costa del Sol. So, it will be a couple more days at least before I have photos and info ready for blog posts about the trip.

In the meantime I am posting this bit which I prepared just before we left for Spain.

We are just past the half way point in our time here in Albufeira this year and we are finding our new place better than we thought it would be and certainly better than the weather!

Though we have had some fairly nice periods, so far, this has to be the coolest, windiest, cloudiest and rainiest of our visits to Portugal. Several mornings at the beach the temperature was around 5 or 6° C with daytime highs often around 13 or 14. I think yesterday and today has been the first 2 day period without rain, and the wind, though still with us, is much reduced in velocity. But, with all that, it's warmer than Dundas! And we are happy and fortunate to be able to be here.

Thinking about having been here now for just over 3 weeks it occurs to me that I have provided no information about the place we are in, so this may be a reasonable time.

Above is what the place looks like from the beach.

This is the image one encounters on arrival.

To the right is the hotel "Main" building, where we are living, one floor below the entry way you can see here.

Though smaller than many similar places here in Albufeira, it is quite a bit larger than Club Oceano where we have stayed previously. It appears to have been added on to several times as the floors vary quite a lot and getting around inside can be fairly confusing. To add to the confusion the main building is on the side of a hill so the main entrance is on the 6th floor with 2 floors above and - well 5 below. And the apartments differ significantly - John and Jean have an adequate but quite a small place while ours is large - perhaps 3 times as large as theirs! Rose's place was somewhere in between in size but differed greatly in arrangement - the living area and kitchen were on one floor and the bedroom and bathroom on the floor below - which made it quite inconvenient - for example she had only one phone so had to keep moving it depending on where she was going to be. On the plus side, she had a great ocean view on both levels!

 There are several buildings - a main building (4 star) which is where we are, one or two blocks of 3 star apartments (which are quite small and dreary inside) and a separate building with reception, lobby, bar and wi fi area which, especially in the evenings, is noisy and unpleasant.

There is kind of a patio area outside the lobby building and the main building and it is usually filled with smokers in the evening. As the wi fi area is in the lobby separated from our building we have to go outside to have access to the internet - not terrible but inconvenient, especially when it is raining. And, because TV watching, drinking and chattering is all in the wi fi area, it make internet use in the evening very unsatisfactory - at 6 am there is no one else there, so that is when I go. And as no one else is using their limited band width, it is much faster!

The poor folks in the 3 star area have a bit of a hike to get to their apartments. From this view the 3 star place looks quite reasonable but, as I mentioned, inside the apartments are quite small and rather dingy.

An evening image of the path/road in front of the 3 star "block"/

Unlike our previous place. this one provides an "all inclusive" arrangement with room, meals, drinks, etc. all included in the price - though we are not in this plan!

Next post will be about the trip to Spain.