Originally today’s plan was to go out to a Fish restaurant for Lunch but after the frivolities from the previous night nobody felt up for that and instead it was a unanimous decision to have a chilled day at the villa.
Except it was the exact opposite of a ‘chilled’ day with the sun extremely hot and much time was taken up with either finding or creating shade. Garden furniture was being frequently moved around, until we found the large parasols tilted completely to look like satellite dishes. It was amazing how quickly the sun was moving across the sky meaning more adjustments was called for.
It seemed like the pool had someone in it most of the day including Karen who completed her daily routine of 50 walking widths. It was a lovely pool but I found it difficult to swim in as the shallow end was too shallow for me to swim and turn around. But it was cool and refreshing. Others had fun with the pool inflatables.
Lunch was the usual cheese and charcutier followed by mini magnums which went down well. I abstained from a lunchtime glass of Rose, saving myself for the evening drinks.
I played Ian K at Table Tennis and narrowly lost again but beat Ian L at Pétanque.
Graham and Chris nipped to the supermarket to buy chicken for dinner for which Suzie made a delicious marinade.
And apart from that not much happened. People lazed around, chatted and put the world to rights. Karen even got into reading a book on her kindle.
Around 6pm everyone gathered on the patio for the traditional Gin and Tonics. This was followed by another round of them and whilst later some then switched to some bubble’s others stayed on the G&YT’s whilst dinner was cooking.
Claire made some hors d’oeuvres which were had whilst the girls played Dobble.
Dinner was served and was extremely good and accompanied by bottles of Red, White and Rose. The wine this week has been very good with most bottles costing 5 Euros or under. There has only been one duff bottle which was poured away.
As it was our final night we had our final rounds of Left , Right, Centre or as Suzie christened it Left , Right, Oh FFS. The winners tonight were Sarah & Karen.
The music was then turned on and there was some dancing. The only challenge was there were 10 DJ’s calling out the songs, so it was a little uncoordinated at times but fun nevertheless.
And with that the night was over as was the trip almost also as well.
The last morning was a very leisurely start with everyone not making appearance until around 9am when a late breakfast was had. I even had a clear run in the kitchen before then in washing up the wine glasses and emptying and loading the dishwasher. It has been challenging at times in the kitchen with so many people wanting to help and do things that it has sometimes just been easier to keep out of the way.
It was another baking hot day, and nobody wanted to get too frazzled before the journey home so more moves of the parasols took place. Ian K tried to have a final game of Table Tennis but never finished as we went to help with carrying the rubbish to the bin at the end of the road and then taking all the recyclables which may have included one or two bottles.
And with that and after a quick packing session we were ready to leave. I got a chance to order my first Uber of the week which took Karen, Ian L and myself back to the airport after saying our goodbyes to Graham & Jo who were driving over the border to Jerez and Chris & Claire who were catching a train to Lisbon.
At the airport we used the new Ryanair Express Baggage Dropoff to check in Karen’s bag which worked well and then made our way through Security and onto Passport Control where there was a short wait.
Karen & I went to the CIP lounge which was a quiet haven with a nice layout of sandwiches and pastries. We were joined after a while by Ian K & Sarah before walking to the gate. The screen at the gate then told us that the flight had been moved to another gate. We almost started to walk towards it before checking and found that this was duff information and we were in the correct place
Karen & I were in the exit row again. We enjoyed the extra room but not the fact this meant we were be almost last off the plane again. The flight left early, and it was a very quick flight. It took me while as we descended to get my bearings as to what parts pf beautiful Norfolk we were coming in over.
Immigration at Norwich was slow as ever. Why haven’t they invested the ‘development fees’ on E-Gates? Karen’s bag was just about coming off the carousel as we walked to it.
We ordered an Uber as we left the terminal and walked across to the Holiday Inn to meet it. We had told the others who were much quicker off the plane than us and had no luggage to wait for to go ahead without us to collect their car from our drive but somehow, we still arrived before them in our Uber. This meant we could at least say a proper goodbye to them.
And so 3 ¼ hours after leaving Portugal I had unpacked and had my first cup of tea. On top of the great time we had in lovely Olhao, if that doesn’t convince me to go back then nothing will.
We had had a really good time. At times it had been laugh a minute. I think we were all rather dubious beforehand whether the 10 of us would still be talking at the end of week but everyone had got on really well. Any minor disagreements were soon amicably resolved. I was happy to take different people take the leads with different things at different times. I was quite happy to volunteer to do anything but equally didn’t mind standing back when others seemed especially keen to do them and I didn’t want to stand in their way.
So all in all, a fun packed week with lots to look back upon and will we do it again? – I do hope so.
