Portugal beach fun

Having been on a few long and busy holidays with family lately, we decided to go for a beach flop and drop option this summer. Portugal’s Algarve seemed like an ideal destination. With local flights and a great choice of quality accommodation, it was easy to find somewhere. On our arrival in Faro, we had a taxi waiting to take us to Lagos, our resort for the next 10 days. Lots of travellers will hire a car from Faro airport and drive themselves and this is certainly an easy option, looking at good and well signposted road network. Our hotel was Cascade Wellness and lifestyle resort, the new 5* option in Western Algarve. It looked impressive, and the welcome was even better. We got to sit on a terrace overlooking the sea with couple of refreshing cocktails (fruit crush for kids) in hand; whilst our room was being prepared (we arrived early in the day). The resorts offers an option of hotel rooms in the main building or 1 and 2 bedroom apartments, with joint use of all the facilities. Our two bedroom apartment was huge! It had a massive wraparound terrace and another one on the roof, overlooking the grounds. All very nicely furnished and impeccably clean. It was a good choice! As we had an afternoon, the beach was the place to go! Nearest beach is Porto do Mos, a fantastic stretch of golden sand, with cliffs at both ends, but an easy street level access for all. This quickly become our favourite place for the rest of the trip, especially as the 2 beach restaurants had great food and snacks to choose from. Old Town of Lagos is some 20 minutes’ walk from Cascade hotel, but they do offer a free shuttle for their guests (which is a bit sporadic as it cannot be pre-booked and is done on availability basis) which we used a lot. Old Town is very quaint with its city walls and narrow cobbled streets teeming with little shops, bars and restaurants. We spent hour’s just wondering around, or sipping cocktails and people watching. Well, as long as we could given that our children did complain about being tired after a while. Most of the holiday was spent relaxing around the two pools in the hotel or beach, reading and swimming. True to our intentions this was a flop and drop break. We did manage to go on an afternoon tour of the local grottos which was great fun and visually impressive. Later the same week, we actually walked to the grottos from our hotel (the coastal footpath takes you all the way to Ponta da Piedade lighthouse, with hundreds of steps down to the water’s edge and grottos). Having a car for 3 days made it easy to go and visit Sagres (the most westerly point of continental Europe) and local water park (Slide and Splash).