Tavira’s beaches are another good source of wonderful eateries, a dozen or so grouped together ensure keen competition and good prices. Eating here also means you enjoy the superb sea views. Further west on the beach island you can cross from the mainland via a pontoon bridge, just outside Santa Luzia. On crossing the bridge a sweet little train with take you the short journey to another well run, clean beach complex, with bars and cafes. When we snacked here, dozens of birds joined us, begging for crumbs from our generous club sandwiches. On this stretch of beach you will see an unusual sight, a field of old iron anchors, arranged flower like, in the dunes, hundreds of them, quite a sight. Had it been later in the year these dune backed sandy beaches would have been a swimmers paradise.

The Vila Gale Albacora, based in the dunes was a very pleasant surprise, we popped in to scout around for possible future stays. It has a normal hotel section with traditional rooms, but also boasts rows of cottages set in the fragrant gardens around the huge outdoor pool. Both hotels have indoor and outdoor pools, however you are required to wear swimming caps at the indoor ones. Please get you own before leaving home, we bought ours from reception, however being in the hotel chains colours, deep green, we looked like a pair of sprouts bobbing in a saucepan!

This hotel is right on the mouth of the estuary, and in summer has its own dock and ferry to take guests to the beaches, wonderful. Also in one of the old buildings, next to the chapel is a quaint fishing museum, here they tell the story of the towns past fishing industry. They used miles of anchored nets to channel the fish into shore to be harvested, now we know where the dune ‘field’ of anchors came from. All this is in the hotel grounds, wonderful. The downside is though that it is about 3 miles from town. With hindsight the best thing would have been to split our stay between the two resort hotels, each with its own charming advantages. To sum up, Tavira is an historic and interesting town for the traveller who wants to escape mass tourism out of peak season, April was perhaps a tad early, the evenings being a bit chilly. All in all though we had a wonderful time and will rate this town along with Lagos in the west as being among the best places to visit on the Algarve, for those seeking the real Portugal.

 

After two extended tours of Iberia and several normal sun and beach holidays, we were looking for a change of both temperature and scene for some of our future holidays. Linda, being an avid (if not fanatical) Sound of Music lover, came up with Austria as our next destination, clever girl!
We usually fly into Munich in Bavaria, Southern Germany, because it has more flight options and can be considerably cheaper than Salzburg or Innsbruck, car hire is also much less expensive than in Austria.

An hour’s drive (VW Golf tdi this time and don’t forget to buy your motorway toll card as soon as you cross the border!) will get you down to the Austrian border, and a further half hour into magical Salzburg. The contrast of rolling green meadows, huge lakes and quirky, stunning castles set against a backdrop of grey snow capped Alps is mesmerising! That’s why we often combine a stay in Austria with a second week, or at least a few days in Bavaria, best of both worlds.
June 2003 saw us booked into Diessen at a lakeside hotel, followed by a week in Oberstaufen, close to lake Constance (beautiful) before crossing into Austria, for a week by Lake Grundlsee. This was our main holiday and we wanted a good long break.

A 90 minute drive south from Salzburg, we headed for Grundlsee on good roads alongside scenic blue or green lakes encased for eons by towering crags. The deep clean waters change colour with the angle of the sun, pretty colourful villages perch on the precious stretches of level land before the rolling alpine meadows start. And the air, wow! You realise you can actually taste real fresh air.

Our accommodation was a very plush timeshare resort complex (not as expensive as you might think, see our website for travel hints and tips). The complex sat on a small hillock at the western end of the crooked finger shaped lake. Imagine looking along a banana, so that from our resort we could not see the far end of the lake around the bend.
After a bit of haggling with the receptionist, at first they offered us a studio with a sofa bed (no good when you are 17 stone + like me), we ended up with the best view in town!

As always in these features we like to find the A (ahh) spot in town to best describe the view, well this time it was from our lounge picture window. We looked out to the east, through to the bend in the lake, at about 150 metres above the lake surface we could survey our surroundings unobserved. The village of Grundlsee sat on the left foreground, rising away to the meadows and mountains behind. A road ran the length of the crystal lake to the small settlement and campsite at Gossl, unseen around the bend at the eastern end.

A second small pretty lake, Toplitzsee laid a few hundred metres further on up a track, with a café and bar for visitors. Small elegant passenger boats ferried people from the village of Grundlsee to Gossl, there to wander the track to the Toplitzsee.

More intrepid visitors could walk the ‘Geo Trail’ through the woods on the right hand lakeside to reach Gossl. Alas when we were there instead of the normal 20 degrees of June it was a 30 + heat wave. Wilting with every step, we never managed to walk the length of the lake, still that’s what Golf tdi’s and air conditioning are for!

The apartment, lovely as it was, did not lend itself to be cool, so it was a couple of days later I purchased the last electric fan in the area for the exorbitant price of £35 (never have told Linda the true price to this day!). Of course the next day the heavens opened and temperatures plummeted, right now, sitting here by my computer I am looking at the worlds dearest fan, awaiting our English summer heat, I’ll get my moneys worth!

Anyhow, the pictures show our beautiful view better than I can ever describe, so I’ll let them speak. You will understand why most of our evenings were spent sitting in our lounge, a bottle or two of wine. Watching the changing shadows and hues of this inspiring lake.

Our second day, Sunday, we drove to Gossl for a wander around, a leisurely lunch and of course a sample of the excellent Austrian beer. We found that a large glass of ‘Radler’ (shandy) slipped down a treat. The village was a lot busier than expected, a display by the local model flying club was in progress. These wonderful smooth lakes make for a variety of water based flying machines, lifelike flying boats, seaplanes and float equipped helicopters. Buzzed and hummed over the lake in aerial ballet as we sipped (well gulped actually) our lager shandies in the shimmering heat.

There is, as usual, not enough space here to go into great detail, but we try to give you a ‘feel’ for the area and Austria in general. Our greatest impression of the country is that it is so, well, civilised, the way 1950s Britain used to be. No litter, little if any graffiti, civic pride may sum it up, we love it. Even when shopping, minimal wrapping on everything, all plastic bottles have a deposit on them, and the thing is, people do return them! We didn’t see one abandoned car wreck, or witness a single ‘incident’. Maybe we were lucky, all I can relate is what we actually experienced and our views, so please bear that in mind.

The complex has a leisure centre, pools, whirlpool, gym sauna all the usual knobs and whistles, a bar/restaurant that has a terrace with ‘to die for’ views, our two weeks timeshare on the Costa del Sol were paying huge dividends (see travel hint and tips on our website). The town itself has a few bars and restaurants, and Grundlsee is only a 5 minute drive from Bad Aussee, a large (ish) town with full amenities. One thing to bear in mind, if self catering, don’t expect supermarkets to be open Saturday afternoons or Sundays, I told you it was civilised, although it did catch us out first time around!

Speaking of being ‘caught out’, we are not too well up on the German language, and we had a comical experience one night down in the town. There is one restaurant that has a circular terrace jutting out on to the lake. We dined there a few times, that first night we both fancied the same things, soup followed by ‘Woodcutters’ pork steak platter, mmm, great. I ordered, “zwie suppe, und zwie ‘Woodcutters” pointing to both items on the menu and of course “zwie Radler bitte”. 10 minutes later the young waitress placed a bowl of soup in front of me, another 5 minutes and nothing arrived for Lin, so we shared the soup.

5 minutes later, the girl cleared away, we laughed and made a mental note to ensure we only paid for one soup! Then a single plate of main course was put in front of me. Again we waited! 3 minutes later I called the waitress, ”where is the other meal, zwie, zwie!” I said pointing at us, and the single plate of food. She scooped up the plate and ran for the kitchen.

The girl returned and was carrying two plates. Hooray, turned to arghhh! As she set the plates down it was obvious that the single portion had been halved, even the lonely lettuce leaf garnish was neatly divided and put onto two hot plates. We folded up with laughter, then at last the penny dropped and she realised what we had wanted originally! We said not to worry and waived her attempts aside to remove the plates. It was worth the laugh to have just half a meal, she even got a good tip. Maybe it is common practice for men to feed wives scraps from their plate, I said they were civilised! Joke, joke, honest!

There is even a photo of the meal on our website, on the Travel Bites page. Food is quite hearty and filling in this part of the world, of course there are the higher priced restaurants, but the mainstream is meat and vegetables. Coffee and cake, now that is a different matter, the amazing variety of wonderful cakes available for morning and afternoon treats, not a place for dieters, although its easy to walk all those calories off!

What to do, well for people like us, just sitting and taking in the views is enough, we did hire electric boats on the lake a couple of times, great fun. Within a few miles there are many attractions, ice caves, waterfalls, gorges, scenic mountains drives, where beautiful birds (feathered) pinch your lunch from the table when you stop to eat (see website photo). Winter of course brings a different wonderland, cross country skiing, sleigh rides and the scenery (we have yet to do a winter trip). The best thing about Grundlsee is that we see it every day, at home and at work (as a screensaver) they have a wonderful ‘daily photo’ website at;