Albufeira - popular coastal town in Algarve

As I've said, we thought we booked a hotel in Albufeira, to realise on arrival it is in Sao Rafael. Not that we minded, as it was far more tranquil and what we like.  Albufeira is only 2km from Sao Rafael - although due to steep hills not recommended to walk.  We drove to town twice to explore it a bit and another time to have dinner there.  It is a huge touristy town with holiday flats and hotels.  We've mainly spend time in the old town, which is a bit more tranquil. 

The houses below reminded me of the Malay houses in Cape Town:

We stopped along the road to have coffee, looking over the ocean:

I had to take a photo of this pretty house:

The long beach of Albufeira.  In the furthest corner (a bit too small on the photo), is a lift with which you can come from the top of the cliff down to the beach. On the right the beach is lined with restaurants.

And below on this side of the beach there's an escalator to descend from the top (it is in 2 phases, you can see the silver lines going up):

Unlike Sao Rafael where the highest building we've seen had 4 stories, here you can see what some Portugese beach resorts look like - buildings upon buildings of flats.  This was still better than other high rise buildings we could see in a distance from another town

And more tiles:

We took a photo from our restaurant to the opposite one as it had a pretty courtyard (we couldn't really decide which one to choose, but our choice didn't disappoint us)

We tried to eat Portugese dishes where possible.  Here is a cataplana, a typical dish from the Algarve region (JL had to eat all the seafood in it, as I only eat fish)

Albufeira's beach from another angle. You can see the eroded cliffs.

In the heart of the old town

The restaurant we chose for the evening.  It used to be a theatre, now they use the stage for musical evenings (not that we had one, unfortunately):