Parents Weekend Away! Part 1!

Some of you may know that earlier this year I won a free flight (to anywhere in europe) from Pringles! I was amazed! I never win anything and in all honestly doubted slightly that anyone ever did. I was very surprised and very happy! This year, back in June, was our 10th wedding anniversary. So with the free flight and celebrating 10 years….how could we pass up a great opportunity for a weekend away to celebrate!?

Our niece very kindly agreed to having the kids for the weekend. What a treasure! Our kids are pretty good most of the time…but when they decide to play up….man it is draining! I was kind of worried that they would play up so bad that they would put her off of being a mum for life! Haha!

The couple of days leading up to it, I was so nervous! First time of leaving the kids and us staying away. Holy smokes! That’s kind of a big deal for me. It wasn’t just down the road either…nope, don’t do things by halves! Do a different country! My mind kicked into overdrive….”What if they get sick or really hurt and we’re not there?” “What if one of us gets really hurt and has to go to hospital and stay out there for longer??” “What if the plane crashes and burns and we die????? Is our will up to date???” You know, the sane and totally rationale thoughts that any normal person has, right!? Anyway, the night before we left I could hear the older 2 chatting. I left them for a bit before telling them to get back into bed. A few minutes later they came down with this…

….totally melted me and before I knew it tears were streaming down my face! They signed it for the younger two also! Sometimes they can be so flipping cute and thoughtful!

We got up nice and early, gave the kids one last kiss goodbye (while they slept), and set off on our weekend away to the Algarve, Portugal! We flew with Jet2 and I have to say both flights were great. The planes were very basic, but for a 2.5 hour flight…you don’t need all that much! We also set off and landed a little earlier on both flights.

We flew into Faro and was greeted by friendly people and beautiful weather! We hopped on a bus to Faro City Centre and walked around and explored a little before heading off to our hotel in Albufeira. WOW! We really enjoyed checking this city out! We ate lunch by the beautiful harbour, in a place called ‘Cafe do Coreto’.

We also wandered around the streets and found such a contrast from well kept buildings to really run down buildings. There was lots of graffiti too! There were lots of lovely churches and the cathedral to look around. We went to see the Chapel of Bones. It was a bit surreal!

After wandering around Faro for the day, we caught a bus from Faro to Albufeira. It was a longer journey than it could have been if we got the train, but other than the train station being further away from the city centre we got to see more of the Algarve area. We enjoyed the journey because we got to see more.

We stayed at the Baltum Hotel. The main reason we decided on this one is because it had a roof top Jacuzzi! So we finished off our day in the jacuzzi, watching the sunset! Lush!

To be continued! The rest of the weekend update is coming soon!

Have you ever been to Faro? If not and you ever get chance to have a wander around, we would definitely recommend it!