Big Birthday

Peter and Sharon landed at close to midnight in Faro, consequently we only managed to meet up in the morning, the morning of Lynnes birthday. We walked over to Portimau and immediately ran into a problem in that we had decided to lunch in a fish restaurant and Sharon didn't eat fish!

Easily sorted by the substitution of chicken, its probably symptomatic of my wife's experiences over the last few years that food that looks at her holds fewer fears than it did. Peter however still needed a few top tips on head and bone removal. Seafood Portuguese style , fish wi nowt taken out!
After a nice lunch we had a few more drinks on the square before visiting a supermarket for essential supplies, toothbrushes, 3 litre box of wine etc.
Peter had thoughtfully brought out our essential supplies, hard to find fuses, a replacement OCC burgee, electronic charts on memory cards, pilot books for the Mediterranean, the latter very heavy! and Lynnes all important pension paperwork.
That night we celebrated with a curry in the best restaurant in Praia de Rocha, (according to trip advisor). Very good it was too!

We then went to an Irish bar allegedly for one, there was a Benny Hill lookalike travelling troubadour with a guitar and a karaoke machine, (he is just over Peters left shoulder in the photo below) He turned out to be a star, or maybe we were just drunk but we did have a great night, and one became many.....

This bar became our go to place the following night after a lovely meal in one of the restaurants on the beach the Senhora de Rocha, again cocktails proved our undoing.

Dancing was attempted, not always successfully.......

But in the mornings the beaches were glorious. We got to try out our new beach umbrella we had rescued from the river at Seixal. Peter bought presents for the children from the "lucky lucky man"

Thecoastline of the western Algarve is a geologists dream with soft rocks and caves ,wave cut platforms arches and other stuff

All in all we had a wonderful meet up with Peter and Sharon, without any prior planning we were pretty much in sight of each other, being about 10 minutes walk away from each other. On the final evening we dined near Peter and Sharon's apartment block in a strange shack like place called the "Ponderosa" which turned out to be cheap as chips and utterly brilliant.

We had a wonderful few days which we will always remember. A fitting birthday for Lynne who I know was chuffed to buttons that her baby brother had gone to all the effort to join us. It was certainly an alcohol fuelled few days but ones that we will remember for a very long time,

We were sad when they had to leave and rejoin the real world......