Pateo Village in Albufeira, Portugal. For those who don’t know, Pateo is Portuguese for Patio. So we stayed on someone’s massive patio. The accommodation was massive, we had two apartments each with two double bedrooms. Proper double bedroom size with wardrobes and bedside tables. In the living room there was a cupboard big enough to accommodate a dead body. Or a living one as we found out.
On the line of such macabre thoughts, we were in Portugal when Madeline McCann disappeared. There wasn’t much interest in the case from local news, we found out about it watching Sky News on the TV in the apartment. The reports were always conducted by what we thought was ‘Size Inwards’ but turned out to be someone called Sky’s Ian Woods. Easy mistake to make.
While we were there we hired some cars, with me driving for the first time since I’d recently passed my test. We hired two cars with myself & Adam booking them, at the time Adam was still under 25 but had passed his test at 17 so had been driving a few years, on the other hand I was 40 but had only just passed my test. They charged Adam extra insurance for being young, whilst mine was cheaper although I had no experience. Also, we booked the cars for 2 days I think, but they didn’t collect them so we just drove them for an extra day for nothing.
While we’re talking about driving, we can’t not mention Portimao a day out I’ll never forget. I remember nothing about the town, but I know its ring roads really well. Who can forget my 3 attempts at leaving the town and each time having to follow the ring road back around as I missed the turning that we needed.
Oh how we laughed.
We visited a marine park / wildlife centre, I thought it was pretty good. A massive aquarium with a shark slowly drifting around, no matter how cuddly some people think they are, when you see a huge shark loom out of the depths towards you it’s pretty unnerving. They put on a seal show which was quite funny. All in all it was the kind of thing I’ve never been to before and I liked it.
The other main thing I remember about that holiday was the food. A lot of seafood. A mixed grill served in a piece of guttering and Cuss happily ploughing through a cataplana made for two people. The seafood skewers were often made at home every time we had a BBQ for years after.
