FARO: SOME EASTER SUNSHINE ON THE COAST

The Algarve area of Portugal was somewhere we'd never been to before and, on the back of a highly recommended New Year's visit to Lisbon, we thought we'd give a different Portugese location a bash!

Faro is the principle city of the country's southern most region and also boasts an international airport.

We flew out on the 8.05 easyJet flight from Gatwick (£522 return for three people), which arrived at 10.50. As is the case in Portugal, Ubers are really cheap and Faro airport is only a six euro ride from the city centre!

The city is also geographically positioned so that we could visit places we wanted to see to the east and west, only short train rides away. As you can see from our flight details, we had an additional Full Steam Ahead traveller with us, so we were making decisions that took into account what they would like to do as well!

Accommodation

Usually we choose hotels that incorporate breakfast into the price, but these aren't as abundant as you'd imagine in the area we wanted to stay. We picked the Roots Hotel which worked out at three hundred and sixty two pounds for three people for a three night stay. The rooms here are essentially in the style of apartments, with well equipped kitchenettes built into an open-plan lay out feeding into the living room.

The sleeping quarters are arranged into a large double room, with plenty of wardrobe space and a comfortable double bed, followed by a sofa that converts into a pull out double bed in the lounge. Both the lounge and bedroom have south-facing balconies that absorb all of the sunlight.

Finally, the bathroom is spacious with all of the features expected in decent accommodation.

Every day the towels are changed should you wish them to be, the beds freshly made and, what we thought was a nice touch, our dishes and cutlery etc were all removed from the dishwasher and carefully returned to the shelves and drawers.

Breakfast can be delivered via and external agent if chosen at an extra ten Euros a head cost, but we chose to buy our own fruit, bread, cheese, ham, yoghurt and juice from the nearby Minipreco supermarket as we had excellent facilities to utilise.

Outside there is a nice ground floor terrace with tables and chairs and what is labelled as a jacuzzi, but is really a small pool which is ideal for a dip to cool down in.

The location is also very convenient, being only a two minute walk from the coastal train station (not that you can hear any trains from the rooms), as well as being only a few minutes walk to the marina, old town, restaurants and amenities.

Aside from all of the well appointed features aforementioned, though, the most impressive attribute of the Roots Hotel is its staff. Hospitable and friendly from the outset, whom ever we saw at the reception on various occasions was always very amicable and answered every question we had with a smile and even gave us towels for the beach.

Day one

We spent the day exploring our immediate surroundings, opting just to amble with no particular objective other than orientating ourselves, casting our eyes on some restaurants and getting a feel for the area.

The marina is neat and functional, home to smaller boats that are a mixture of fishing and pleasure vessels.

Adjoining this is the old town. To enter you have to pass through the neoclassical Arco de Vila with its bells a prominent aspect. A quaint cobbled street took us to Faro's cathedral, flanked by the pretty orange tree lined square. A few streets later and we'd discovered Cinderela, a great little pasteleria (bakery) for an ice cream and pastel de nata. From here we were now in the more modern area of town. Faro is classed as a city but really it has more of a town sized stature. Largely flat and easily walkable, a few hours is enough to find your way around the points of interest and streets. There are no shortage of inviting restaurants that obviously offer fish, but a wide variety of other cuisines are present here as well. As we all prefer different food, we fathomed that we would take it in turns to choose somewhere to dine each night.

After an early start, a flight, thousands of steps achieved in the heat and the added consideration of a child's bedtime, an early evening meal at Costa Algarvia was my choice. Seduced by the mixed menu outside, you can see how nutritious and delicious our peri peri chicken and fish medley was. You might also notice that these dishes both contained bones, something you might not expect as often back at home with chicken.

Something that was apparent within minutes was that Faro is home to some rather impressive storks. These harmless, giant birds patrol the skies and make their nests everywhere from church belfries to streetlights in the middle of roundabouts.

Day two

Albufeira boasts six kilometres of fantastic sandy beaches with stunning cliffs as backdrops, with pretty white washed buildings perched on top of them. These lead into a maze of streets served by restaurants and bars.

Apparently not everyone's cup of tea due to its lively nightlife and the type of tourist this can attract, we had a great day here!

The forty minute train ride from Faro was well worth the twenty one euros return ticket for the three of us, if only to observe the picturesque journey alone. A cautionary word at this juncture, the ticket inspectors on this line are like foxes on bin bags. As soon as you set foot into a carriage, they check your ticket, so make sure you have the correct ticket for travel.

The train station isn't within walking distance to the beach and town, so an Uber transported us. We then took two escalators to enable us a wonderful cliff top view point of the beaches to the east and west. The west beach (Praia dos Pescadores) is busier but at this time of year and the time of morning we landed in town, we could pick our spot. Being the Easter holidays, there were a sufficient number of children for ours to make friends with, allowing us to take turns to get sun burnt (one of us more than the other!) while she happily played.

Two separate forays into the town to the Pop Shop ice cream parlour were imperative before a late afternoon wander around Albufeira's streets, shops, restaurants and a general soaking up of the hub bub. It was early enough for us to swerve the potential antics of revellers and we ended up having pizza and pasta in the Italian Planet restaurant that produced decent, no frills food served by friendly waiters and waitresses. By the train journey home in the early evening we were cream crackered having had a successful and easy to organise day.

Day three

A friend of ours suggested Olhaõ as a contrast to the more tourist centric Albufeira. Olhaõ is a working class town only fifteen minutes east of Faro. The trains don't run particularly frequently so it's worth consulting the timetable the day before to ensure that you arrive at a time that suits your programme.

Fishing is the predominant industry here and the fish market (appreciated by me but not as warmly received by the rest of our contingent!) is a bustling building with some varieties of 'peixe' that we weren't hitherto familiar with.

From here we sauntered down to the marina and were greeted by several cabins all selling boat tours around the Rio Formosa nature reserve and islands of Culatra, Armona and Deserta. Taking into account that we had a slightly nervous-about-a-boat ride junior with us, and the fact the temperature had risen to twenty four degrees, we booked a three hour ride through Odyssey Boat Tours, which amounted to seventy five euros, with a half price discount for children. Our captain (this is slightly over egging the pudding as there were only five passengers in what wasn't much more than a medium sized speed boat) Gabriel, had immense knowledge of the fishing industry which was interesting, but, as with all of the best teachers, his immense enthusiasm for his passion is what resonated the most. Being the three hour trip rather than the five hour outing, we only visited Armona, followed by Culatra. Our tenure on Armona was for an hour and this island, which is essentially a tiny fishing community, had a desolate charm to it. We strolled through the village, encountering a couple of basic restaurants and only a handful of residents as we made our way to the beach, before returning to Capitain Gabriel an hour later. A word of warning here, public toilets are signposted but we had no luck in finding one!

Culatra is only a short ride away but is the more interesting of the two islands. Dozens of small fishing boats were docked in the marina and this island is developed to the point of having over a thousand residents and two schools. We followed the main pathway to the south of the island where our reward was the beautiful Praia de Ilha Culatra. Here we bounded through the Atlantic waves for half an hour before sadly having to make our way back to the boat. Not that we didn't want to see the ever-affable Gabriel again, but the beach was borderline paradise!!

Our sojourn transpired to be nearly four hours long so we got our money's worth.

Weary from the unrelenting sun, a pit stop at the Cantaloupe Jazz Cafe for some mackerel on toast and a jug of sangria was a necessity prior to boarding the train back from Olhão to Faro.

A rest on our balcony and dip in the jacuzzi preceded a freshen up before dinner at Chalet's for sushi upon the little one's request (sixteen pieces for seven euros was outstanding value), and then next door to Namastey Indian restaurant, an eatery that had caught our attention every day previously. The style here would be classed as contemporary and our curries were tasty and deceptively substantial, if not a little on the mild side. Completely stuffed, we left satisfied for our hotel.

Day four

Due to our time being what amounted to half a day (our flight was at 15.10), we decided to bask in the sunshine of Faro; revisting Cinderela, for a last hurrah with another ice cream and pastel, wandering the streets in our quest for souvenirs and having a browse of the artisan market that had set up in the space in front of the marina. All very pleasant and relaxing before our departure home.

Whilst Faro itself may not be the most exciting destination we have ever visited, it was ideal for what we wanted on this occasion; some Easter sunshine on the coast, reasonably priced across the board and a well situated base for one day outings to other towns and attractions along the coast that are easily accessed by the scenic train line.

The many beaches along this stretch of coast are great for all of the family, but at this time of year they aren't full of other tourists with space aplenty available and queues for ice creams and the like are non-existant. We made the most of our time but would like to have explored the towns of Tavira and Fuseta in the east, and the Benagil Caves and Lagos to the west. In hindsight we agreed that at least two more days would have been nice, but this does give us an excuse to return, safe in the knowledge that Faro is a more than adequate post from which to do it all from!