Leanne is leaving Portugal!

The date has been set in stone – on Monday 14th of January I will be catching a flight out of Portugal, standing by in London Stanstead for a few hours before catching another flight to Italy, and flying directly into Calabria….and I cannot wait.

To be honest Portugal is not a place I will return to in a hurry, and I mean no offence to anyone reading this that may be Portuguese or hold special sentiments for the place. One of the main reasons that I have not had the best 3 months working here was the work itself. Working in Italy was totally different, and I did a different job – I actually did something! Here it has been so quiet that a lot of the times I have been driven mad with the fact that there are so few customers and nothing to do. Imagine that – complaining that I wanted to work! Time does tick by ever so slowly when you have nothing to do and you are wanting to be some place else.

I also never really fell ‘in love’ with Portugal as I have with other places before. The Algarve, where I have been based is so over run with tourists that I feel the area has lost any original charm it may have once had. Even the smallest of towns are slowly getting built up and that then is not saying anything for the already built up towns which just seem to be getting higher and higher as more hotels and holiday apartments are made. Many parts of the Algarve that I have seen are virtually man made tourist resorts – aimed predominately at the British market…In my life I have never seen so many restaurants advertising English breakfasts! Every where you go, when people hear you speaking English they automatically assume you are British and I feel like yelling at them that there are more of us out there then just the Brit’s who speak English. I have also never been to a non-English speaking country where most of the signs are written in English…

Enough of the negatives however and on to the positives! I must admit that I have not really experienced winter thus far – the temperature here has not fallen much below 15 degrees in the day, and for the first few months we even had lovely, sunny days in the 20s. So I will miss the wonderful mild Portuguese winter. I will also miss living in a hotel as I have not cooked or cleaned for 3 months – that is the life! Hmm…there are surely other things I will miss and when I think of them I will let you know  In the mean time the count down is on and I cannot wait to get back to Italy and my bel ragazzo.

Oh and finally, when I am about to leave I have found an internet café that lets me down load pics (25 minute drive away but I found it) so better late then never:

The lovely beaches of the Algarve. I have not seen such fantastic beaches since leaving Australia:



When the bel ragazzo came to visit


As you can see it has not been so cold over here. This picture is from middle of December.




Carvoeiro...a lovely little seaside town located over in the west of the Algarve



A visit to the capital of Portugal; Lisbon







A trip to the old capital from Moorish times, Silves





Alvor where I have been living. A very small fishing village.



And good old Albufeira where everything is man made and British