Albufeira is a coastal town in the Algarve region of Southern Portugal, a region known for its stunning coastline, rugged cliffs and sandy beaches. This makes it extremely popular with tourists in the summer, which is the peak season. However, a winter break in Albufeira is probably not a very popular choice. And it is also the exact reason why it turned out to be such an amazing holiday for me. Don’t get it? Keep reading then!
Getting there and Where we stayed
I visited Albufeira in Dec’2015 just after Christmas with my partner and two of our very dear friends. We flew from London to Faro (nearest airport) and had pre-booked a taxi with YellowFish Transfers to pick us up at the airport. We stayed in a 2-bed Airbnb in Old Town, Albufeira with a terrace that had a stunning view of the town as well as the sea.
Get my discount code if you’ve never booked through Airbnb before.
View from the terrace of our airbnb flat
Being off-season, things were really quiet. We spent our time wandering the quiet, quaint and quirky cobbled streets of Old Town. All around us were whitewashed walls with splashes of colours thrown in for good measure. The pinks of the bougainvillaea and the blues of the tiles!!! And with all this beautiful play of colours, I could still feel some sepia seeping in – possibly down to the Moorish influences.
Beautiful Houses
Our flat was at the far end of this pretty little street
And some more gorgeous walls
That’s made of shells, pebbles and what not!
The simple unassuming Igreja Matriz church
A lot of restaurants were closed for the festive season. However, we still had ample options to not go hungry. In fact, we ate a lot. I mean, really, a LOT! I did face a bit of a problem being a vegetarian and had to rely on pasta and risottos mainly.
By the way, I did not know that Piri Piri Chicken was so prevalent here. I now get the Nandos connection! 😀
My favourite Didi cafe – for fresh healthy VEGETARIAN breakfast and coffee
We also took the tuk-tuk tours to nearby beaches. Having read the reviews on TripAdvisor, we were quite interested in it. We did not pre-plan this and did not quite know how to get in touch. However, we managed to get hold of them not too far from our flat.
So, basically, it was an auto-rickshaw ride (2 people per tuk-tuk) of around an hour. Paulo was our driver and he took us to three beautiful beaches on the outskirts while giving us a bit of a background on the place. I would recommend this only if you do not plan to rent a car to travel to the many other stunning beaches that Portugal offers.
One of the beaches seen during the tuk-tuk tour
Fisherman’s beach in Albufeira – Golden sunsets on Golden beaches
Apart from exploring the charming Old Town, we also made a few day trips from Albufeira to nearby places in the Algarve and also all the way to Seville in Spain.
A winter break in Albufeira was the perfect way to wind down after a busy year and get ready for the next!
Have you been to the Albufeira? Would you like to add to things to do?
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Cheers,
Ameeta xx
