All aboard for the Algarve: Fine wines and family fun at the perfect Portuguese resort
By HUGH GORDON, Dailymail
Everyone has their least favourite holiday phrases. Mine include 'international cuisine', 'rail replacement bus' and 'the cost is not included in the price of your package'.
Phrases that I do like to hear are 'free taxi service between the resort and the airport', 'a maid will turn down your bed, light candles and put a complimentary chocolate on your pillow' and 'we offer a five-star eat-as-much-as-you-like breakfast buffet'. Ah, those five-star, posh hotel/resort breakfasts! How can the rest of the day go wrong after one of these cornucopian blow-outs?
Breakfasts at the Vila Vita Park resort on the Algarve are a perfect example of this noble culinary art. There are ten kinds of freshly-squeezed fruit juice. Throw in 20 types of tea (but beware the unpalatable English Breakfast which is, in fact, German-made schwarz tea), an endless relay of waffles, charcuterie, more than a dozen styles of eggs... and you get the mouth-watering picture.
There are even bottles of sparkling wine - the ideal morning sharpener for the couple who sat next to us on our Monarch flight from Gatwick.
Just after the plane took off at 6.50 am, they ordered his 'n' hers tumblers of Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort.
Breakfast is also the best place to buff up your buffet etiquette. Remember the golden rule: those people (usually Belgians) who sit closest to the food counters seem to prefer white bread, copious amounts of meat and cakes - and over-fill their plates.
(..)
the Algarve's seemingly guaranteed all-day sunshine makes the hotel's daily weather bulletin leaflet - which shows the same bright yellow sun symbol - as pointless as a speech by Nick Clegg.
For those wanting more strenuous activity, you can take tennis lessons. By now, that bacchanalian breakfast might be starting to wear off. Lunch everyone?
Naturally, Vila Vita has eight restaurants - one Michelin-starred. A sample menu: 'Squid ink risotto, bell peppers, watercress and garlic foam.' Puddings cost £8 and house wine is £17 a bottle.
Much of the food comes from the hotel's country estate, Herdade dos Grous, an 80-minute drive north in the unspoilt Alentejo region. Named after the area's majestic cranes that build giant wedding cake-style nests on top of chimneys round here, you can visit for a morning of horse-riding followed by a four-course lunch and wine-tasting.
The riding instructress was multi-lingual Anna ('I'm German but consider myself modern European.')
If you want to escape the encroaching concrete of the Algarve coast and stay somewhere which focuses with a passion on its wine, food and equestrian pursuits, this is an attractive, good value retreat. Double rooms start at £162 and half-board £32 per person.
The estate's signature wine is something special - made from grapes that are harvested during a one-hour period under a full moon in August. Thankfully, after several glasses, there was a minibus shuttle back to the coast.
But the delights of Portuguese wine didn't end there. Next to one roundabout on the old N125 coast road, we spotted an advertising hoarding with a huge picture of Cliff Richard leering down. It directed customers to the nearby shopping mall where you can buy bottles of Cliff's own - non-moon harvested - award-winning local vintage.
If the singer can keep looking so young at the age of 72 on a daily bottle of his Vida Nova red, an active sports life and a diet of cuttlefish, mussels and prawns, flights to the Algarve from Britain will be packed for years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Like it?