Sun or sights in the Algarve?

Our Gold Conference Weekend this year took place last week in Anantara Vilamoura, Algarve. We were very lucky to have around 10 degrees above the average temperature for this time of year, so we enjoyed temperatures in the 30s every day.

The Anantara Vilamoura is a stunning hotel with a golf course on-site. The rooms are large with open plan bathrooms also of a good size. It’s around 5km from Vilamoura Marina but they run a free shuttle bus. You can walk it (around 1 hour 15 minutes), some more energetic Travel Counsellors among us jogged it to burn off a few of those holiday calories and we did cycle one morning too. Service was excellent, all the staff were friendly and helpful. Breakfast was included and had a nice choice of good food. The beaches (either side of the Marina) were amazing, very wide, clean and sandy.

We did a catamaran trip from Albufeira which was lovely to see the coastline. Although I’ve been before (20+ years ago) I didn’t remember the cliffs at all and there are a lot of them! I even swam in the sea and although cold at first, it wasn’t unpleasant once you’d been in a couple of minutes.

The last two days we were faced with glorious sunshine and the option to do nothing – this is a very rare occurrence back home or even on our own holidays as the kids will demand our attention. So, we delighted in doing just that – nothing! We just enjoyed lazing by the pool, a bit of reading and just generally not having anything on the agenda! And we couldn’t have had more wonderful surroundings to do it.

I’d highly recommend Vilamoura as a resort, our hotel was set back so ideal if you want a quiet base. The marina was busy with plenty of restaurant and bar options, as well as a few shops. The beaches were amazing. What more could you want from a week in Europe?