Portugal
Algarve
We visited in March and April
The President's Beach is not on any map of the Algarve. Nobody but us ever called it that: it was a family name, from a childhood when our grandparents lived out here and we spent long stretches of the summers here with the family. This trip, at the end of March, was the first time back as an adult, and it went looking for the beaches and restaurants we remembered, and for the pier at Praia da Rocha we used to walk down. It is a long concrete pier banked with huge stones, a haunt of fishermen, with a small lighthouse at the end and the whole beach to look back on.
The end of March is not the Algarve of those summers. The rain is easing, but the sea is too cold to swim in, and stays so through April. May, June and September are the months for the water: in September the sea is near its warmest and the crowds have begun to thin. August peaks in heat and crowds together, the prices with them, and everything has to be booked ahead.
As children we were always out at the family villa. This time we stayed in Lagos, in a beautiful hotel of a kind we never stayed in when we were young, and it crowned the trip. Lagos and the west coast has a walled old town and golden cliffs, and is less built up than the centre. The central coast, from Portimão to Quarteira, is the resort heartland, Praia da Rocha included, and the busiest in summer. Faro and the east is flat and quieter, its coast screened by a lagoon and a chain of sandbar islands.
A day from Lagos starts on foot, along the clifftop path to the arches and sea caves of Ponta da Piedade, or with a short boat trip from the marina for the view from below. Further east, the Seven Hanging Valleys trail follows the cliffs for six kilometres from Marinha beach to Vale Centianes, past Benagil. At Olhão the fish market opens at seven for the boats' catch, and the ferry crosses to Culatra and Armona, sandbar islands with the Atlantic on their far side.
We ate in brilliant local restaurants. Fonte da Pedra, at Alcalar near Portimão, was a family favourite, and we went back. It has been open since 1988, a stone-built room with a wood-fired oven at the heart of the kitchen, cooking Portuguese food and grilled meat, and it calls its fish soup a flavour reference for the Algarve. That is a lot to ask of a soup. The President's Beach, meanwhile, goes by its real name for everyone else.
- Best months
- May, June and September
- Avoid
- August, when the heat, crowds and prices all peak together
- Nearest airport
- Faro (FAO)
- Transfer
- 25-30 minutes to Faro and the east or the hills inland, around 40 to the central coast, 50 to Lagos, and up to 90 to Sagres in the far west
Neighbourhoods
Where to stay
7 hotels
7 hotels
Grown-up & familyCasa Mae
£££Algarve, Portugal
A nineteenth-century estate house in old-town Lagos that still keeps a vegetable garden and two hundred chickens, with cocktails in a courtyard ringed by birds of paradise.
Family-friendlyMartinhal Sagres
££Algarve, Portugal
A pool deck just above the sand of Martinhal beach, with a crèche from six months and clubs for children up to seventeen.
Grown-upPalácio de Tavira
££Algarve, Portugal
An 18th-century Tavira palace with two plunge pools on its roof, above the terracotta and the church domes, and in its Moorish-inspired wing a bronze shower under the open sky.
Grown-up & familyPousada Palácio Estoi
££Algarve, Portugal
A pink Rococo palace inland from Faro, cherubs floating across the salon ceiling between gilt chandeliers, and the bedrooms in a pale stone wing next door, each with a balcony.
Family-friendlyPraia do Canal Nature Retreat
££Algarve, Portugal
Loungers set in the shallows of an infinity pool on a plateau in the Vicentine coast natural park, looking down a valley to a strip of Atlantic.
Grown-up & familyViceroy at Ombria
££Algarve, Portugal
A whitewashed hill village north of Loulé, built all at once, with a tower over the pool terrace where the church bell ought to be and a golf course in the valley below.
Grown-upVila Joya
££££Algarve, Portugal
Dinner under the arches of a two-Michelin-star restaurant, with an Algarve garden running down to the sand of Praia da Galé and only thirteen rooms to share it.
Where to eat
5 restaurants
Alameda
£££ · Recommended
Faro and the east · modern Portuguese
A tasting menu drawn from Algarve folk legends, built around local fish and seafood, behind a glass-fronted terrace in Faro.
Reviewed in the Michelin Guide
Bon Bon
££££ · Recommended
The central coast · modern Portuguese
José Lopes folds his grandmother's Indian heritage into an Algarve tasting menu, in an octagonal room near Carvoeiro.
Reviewed in the Michelin Guide
Mesa Farta
££ · Recommended
Faro and the east · contemporary Algarve
Natural fermentation bread and squid risotto from an open kitchen, in a converted warehouse south-west of central Tavira.
Reviewed in the Michelin Guide and Guía Repsol
Vila Joya
££££ · Recommended
The central coast · modern European
Dieter Koschina's tasting menu on a cliffside terrace above Galé beach, with two Michelin stars held for over two decades.
Reviewed in the Michelin Guide
