TRAVEL: Portugal & The Beautiful Algarve!

I've recently been on a series of little jaunts and the Algarve was the second installment. It's been an absolutely amazing few weeks!

Myself and my friend Penny visited Albufeira and stayed for 5 days.  We've been twice before, and this is actually my fourth visit to the same spot in two years, so its starting to feel like a home away from home. Now normally I'm not really a creature of habit and like to spend my holiday visiting new places, but, we've gotten to know a few people who work in the bars, I know the nice places to eat, the drinks are cheap and the temperature and surroundings are just perfect. Something about the place has got me hooked and I need my regular fix! Part of me really wants to spend a summer there, working or DJing in bars, and it's a fantasy I allude to everytime I go back. The beautiful Mediterranean sea is calling my name, and if I could easily do it, I would!

In some ways, Albufeira is ridiculously touristy and that would normally annoy me. But Albufeira has something about it, a cheeky charm, friendly locals, and I love that. I know that when I go there, I will be mostly going to chill out, eat and drink, and I'm okay with that, especially with a pretty stressful job back home. Relatively speaking, a meal out with wine will cost you about £10, so as long as you don't go mad you won't break the bank. Even in the height of the season, our hotel was £60 each for the week, and flights were £50 return, so we knew we were getting a cheap holiday.

In between chilling and more chilling on the beach, we did venture out to the zoo in Lagos! We saw a whole number of animals, including some cats and some monkeys, which was to be honest the main reason we went..

 


We also went on a bar crawl, where the average age of everyone seemed to be about 16 and there was copious amounts of people using water guns to squirt sambuca into people's mouths, but we did make some cool Irish friends so it was 20 euros well spent.

And some robot friends.

The bars are great fun in Albufeira, and either in or out of season, you will usually find us in a little kareoke bar called Albertus! The staff are friendly and the atmosphere is great, which really is all you need.

A good relaxing week well spent! We also found pictures of Cliff everywhere..

Are you off on holiday anytime soon? I'd love to hear about your exciting summer plans!

TRAVEL: Romania - In Search of Dracula!

The other week, myself and three of my friends went off on a little adventure to Romania in search of Dracula!

Dracula is such an enchanting story and, like complete tourists, we were utterly drawn to the castle that inspired Bram Stoker.

We made a long journey over to Brasov after a brief stop in Bucharest, which seem like cities that are two worlds apart.

Bucharest is a bustling capital, with a beautiful old town centre with cheap eateries, but with a contrasting poverty line that is hard to ignore. Before we left, we all caught a documentary which detailed the issues the Country has faced post communism. With orphanages all being closed, many helpless people have taken to the streets and taken up home in the sewers. It was truly a story of a very interesting community dependent on drugs. Whilst having a coffee outside the main station on our way to Brasov, we saw people casually entering and leaving the sewers. It was shocking because all those around them, including police officers, taxi drivers, general commuters didn't bat an eyelid. It was moving and disturbing and a real eye opener into the lives of those in the capital.

On a lighter note, our first night in Brasov, as an utter contrast, was at an airbnb which we secured for about £20 for the four of us in total. We stayed with a local guy, who was really good fun and offered us a drink that evening. We wandered out to the main town centre that evening which was bustling an busy (their Sunday is our Saturday, because most people have Mondays off!) It felt secure and comfortable, families were out walking late, our host left his door unlocked, and there didn't seem to be any signs of trouble.


Our next stop the next day was of course, Dracula's Castle!

As well as lots of fun tourist shops, the Castle itself was quite interesting and it was fun finding the secret staircases and getting lost. There wasn't much mention of Dracula himself really, or Bram Stoker, but this didn't bother us because we got caught up in the excitement of it all and bought lots of trinkets from the tourist stalls there.

Our last night in Bucharest was fairly tame, we were all exhausted from all the travelling and didn't get to travel much or explore Bucharest as much as I'd have liked to, but we had a really great time anyway. Romania is cheap to eat and drink in, a bottle of wine was setting us back around the region of £6 in a restaurant, which was good and bad news for us, as it meant we got through too many!

The whole trip cost around £60 each including hotels and flights from the UK. A weekend well spent!

Have you got any holidays booked? Have you ever been to Romania? Let me know!

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