The Algarve, Portugal
Portugal’s south coast is orange rock, white towns, and more sunny days a year than just about anywhere else in Europe.
The beaches sit at the bottom of cliffs. You get to most of them down a set of wooden stairs, and to the best ones by boat. Faro has the airport and the old walled centre. Lagos has the coves that end up on postcards. In between are towns where the boats still go out at dawn and the fish at lunch came off one of them.
Drive twenty minutes inland and it all changes: cork oaks, orange groves, hill villages, and the Moorish castle at Silves. Almost nobody staying at the beach makes that drive. It takes twenty minutes.
Come for the coast. The part you will actually tell people about is the wrong turn that ended with grilled sardines at a place with four tables and no menu.
