Mea Culpa

My goodness, I had no idea that anyone might be offended by the fact that I didn't adore every minute of our trip to Portugal. I will allow that with more research, we might have better anticipated -- and done a better job of steering clear of -- the more commercial areas of the country. (Our traveling companions, whose "vacation spreadsheet and timetable" travel approach is in direct contrast to our "lets wander and see what we find" travel approach, are no doubt smiling smugly right now.) In my defense, I did do a fair amount of reading about the Algarve prior to our trip and I was aware of the fact that it is more built up and resort-focused than other parts of the country. I guess I just had a romantic notion that European commercial kudzu would be more charming than its American equivalent. "Fraid not, folks. I stand duly corrected; schlock is schlock the whole world through.

I'm not going to apologize for the fact that we were less than enamored with some of the parts of Portugal we encountered on our trip. But I will certainly acknowledge that Portugal as a whole is not represented by the small sampling of the country that we saw last week. And since I've already had several visitors who arrived here by doing a Google blog search for "Algarve" (I kid you not), I figure the least I can do is offer up a few photographs of the more picturesque moments of our journey to dispel the notion that the place is completely devoid of charm.


Of course, were my kids impressed by any of the above? Hardly. Their favorite photos from our trip look like this:

Bottom line, I said it before and I'll say it again. Our Portuguese trip might not have been exactly what we expected, but we had a great time there nonetheless. Such is the pleasure of traveling with true friends.