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Christmas & New Year

22nd December 2007: The sun shone brightly for us as we crossed the border into Portugal.

Settling in at the Orbitur Quarteira campsite in Quarteira was easy - lovely site, blue skies, sunshine and the nearby beach is beautiful.

We had a great Christmas in Portugal at Grant & Tam's stunning Villa set in the hills surrounded by stunning scenery, looking out towards Faro with the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.
Their Algarve retreat is set on the hill side in São Bras de Alportel about 45 mins from the campsite in Quarteira.

Grant & Tam are friends of Alison's cousin Dave.
Dave, Thrin and their daughter Rosie were staying with them for Christmas and when they realised how close we were to them invited us to visit them on the day before Christmas Eve.

With Nel parked outside their gate on a pitch surely built especially for us, we were welcomed into "Casa de Sonhos" (House of Dreams).
We had a great day and Grant & Tam invited us to join them again for Christmas Day, WOW were we really going to be spending Christmas here!? Oh yes! - and we had thought we would have our Christmas Day in the van on some lonely campsite!

We spent Christmas day sitting in the garden overlooking the pool and awesome views beyond.
In the evening Tam cooked up a huge roast beef dinner with help from Thrin & Alison while us blokes drank a crate or two of local beer and more wine and put the world to rights.
We pulled crackers, had traditional English, and Portuguese Christmas puddings and were entertained by Dave and by Rosie's clockwork toy "racing grannies on Zimmer frames" - hilarious when you had drunk as much as we all had!

We were then joined on Boxing Day by Alison's other cousin Claire, husband Saul and their boys Tyler and Rudi who were also by coincidence, spending Christmas travelling down through Spain in their VW camper van to Seville.

Another fantastic day was spent eating, drinking more of the local wine and soaking up the sun and scenery - we all had a great time.

A couple of days later Claire, Saul and boys joined us on the campsite at Quarteira were we all stayed until New Years Day.

On New Years Eve we all walked along the esplanade and were amazed to stumble into a huge Music, Laser light and Fireworks Extravaganza on the beach, the like of which I have never seen before.
There was a great atmosphere, however the Portuguese are more reserved than us and we soon realised that we were the only group of crazy English people dancing on the sand while all around us just stood opening many bottles of wine and Champagne.

Claire, Saul and boys hit the road for France on New Years Day and we decided to head south and east back into Spain stopping again at Isla Cristina for a few days to use their FREE internet access and catch up with everyone.

Well what a start to our new life! it all seems a bit surreal but we are adapting to it very quickly!

A very special thank you goes to Grant & Tam for their hospitality at their beautiful home and for making our Christmas so special - Thank you!

We will now probably follow the coast down to Gibraltar and then along into the Med, saving the west of Portugal until later in the year when much warmer.

From the little we have seen so far, Portugal is beautiful and the people are lovely.