So here I am, heading over to Faro airport ahead of flying home tonight. This last post is kindly sponsored by my airline who have given me an extra two hours to get tapping and round off my tales from Portugal. Very good of them to cancel my original flight and rebook me on one…

It was soon time to leave Lisbon and start the three-hour coach journey down to the Algarve where I shall be finishing up my trip. I’m staying in Albufeira, lovely white-walled Albufeira, dreamy, sandy, blue-sea Albufeira. And, as some of you Algarve experts will know, lager-louty, yobbish Albufeira. Because there is no doubt this is…

They say that Lisbon is built on seven hills, like Rome. I’m sure I climbed dozens more during my short stay, and my legs and back muscles are claiming they bagged hundreds. But the cliche does hide a truth; it’s a hilly city. To really get the most out of it (I’m not sure I…

And so the mighty Tagus river, the greatest in Iberia, slips slowly out of the great lagoons of Lisbon, and out through the breakwater and into the wide Atlantic itself. Take a look at that horizon, that gap between shore and shore, mysterious and alluring, the unknown open sea. Not completely unknown to Phonecian, Roman,…