17. Twas on a monday morning the gas man came to
Trip Start
Jun 17, ????
1
21
36
Trip End
Ongoing
Ferragudo,
Portugal
Saturday, June 28, 2003
We had rented a villa through a company that had been found for me by a butler service that I was trialling for my company as a potential employee benefit. My employers never went with the butlering service, but it worked for me! The villa has two bedrooms, a modern fitted kitchen and a lovely private pool. The only disadvantage was the regular flow of service people faffing about with the pool, the garden and FSM-knows what else. Not conducive to a relaxing sunbathe as it goes...
Still, its an interesting area, so the last thing I wanted to do was spend the week lying about waiting for the next manual labourer to look at my backside. We had hired a car and successfully navigated our way from Faro airport to Ferragudo. This involved staying on the same road for pretty much the entire journey, so even we couldn't balls that up.
My favourite places were Silves and Lagos (which sound like "Shilvesh" and "Lagosh"; Portugese is not very predicatable in its pronounciations. Shortly after we arrived a housekeeper popped by with some food and asked whether we'd come via "X" town and we said that we hadn't. Of course, we had, we'd just been pronouncing it wrongly all day).
Both these places are pretty and we did a fab boat tour from Lagos. At Silves, we explored a castle (I hope I've remembered these two places round the right way) which always goes down well with Mr Monk-san.
The supermarket was very competetively priced, so we picked up a bottle or two of port, plus a load of gin and tonic and spent any time at the villa swilling it back. Ferragudo itself is a sweet little village with a lovely beach. A few too many kids around for my liking (ie any) so we stuck to our own peaceful villa for our swiming requirements. I managed to get in a couple of swims a day, but Mr MS is a big girl's blouse and only went in the once.
