Colina Village

RIGHT NEXT TO COLINA VILLAGE APARTMENTS

by JohnnySpangles about POCO PARTIDO

PRETY GOOD FOOD, GOOD PORTUGESE WINE. REASONABLE PRICES. PIRI PIR CHICKEN RINGS A BELL. PLENTY OF OUTSIDE TABLES. SUGGEST YOU BOOK IN ADVANCE

THE ALGARVE - NICE WHEN ITS FINISHED

by JohnnySpangles

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I stayed at the Colina Village Apartments, which are about a twenty minute walk from the beach town of Carvoeiro. However that can be a fairly desperate twenty minutes alongside a busy road on a dodgy pavement. If you can avoid Portugal’s notoriously bad drivers then keep one eye out for the stray and bad-tempered dogs that patrol the waste ground on the other side of the pavement. You’ll probably end up ordering a taxi, especially if you’ve got the additional targets of small children to worry about.

The beach town of Carvoeiro is reasonably pleasant although, like anywhere in the Algarve, the beaches are very busy and the water isn’t that welcoming. If you’ve never been to the Algarve before you will find that your spirits are immediately dampened on the bus ride from the airport. Your first impression will be that of ‘building site’. It’s also your second impression, and your third, and your lasting one too. It all looks like it’s only half finished. There is little natural beauty to the place so you get the feeling they are trying desperately to create it out of cement. However everything only seems to get half built. A token gesture, if you will, to try and stop the tourists complaining too much. Most of their effort seems to have gone into creating golf courses and bugger all else.

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The Colina Village apartments were okay, although even they had a building site next to them, which is probably still there if it’s anything like the rest of the country. There was a reasonable pool area and I did manage to find a couple of half decent restaurants in the area. One of which was probably one of the best Indian restaurants I’ve ever been in and I was amazed to find that it wasting its time in Carvoeiro. I suggested to the owner that he should move to South London, so he may well have taken my advice. See my restaurant tips for further details and check before you go. If that Indian restaurant is no longer there don’t even bother going to The Algarve

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Some of the half-arsed tourist attractions are worth avoiding. One in particular billed itself as ‘An Adventure Crazy Golf’, avoid it like the plague. They give you a stick and a golf ball then let you wander around a building site whilst being chased by a neurotic llama. If the llama doesn’t get you the giant wasps will.

The pictures on this page probably make the place look quite quaint, they are heavily cropped though. So don’t blame if you don’t like it when you get there.