agincourt: TORONTO TO THE ALGARVE: DAY 2/3

The flight for Faro left in the early evening giving us most of the day to explore Toronto. We decided to visit the Royal Ontario Museum which recently had a major and controversial addition made to it - the Crystal. This is a unusual glass and steel front added to an old building. There were a couple of special exhibitions on while we were there, one on Diamonds and the other on Wedgwood china. There were the usual regular galleries. We hadn't been here before and enjoyed that visit. It was then time to collect our belongings and head to the airport. We flew with Air Transat, a Canadian airline specializing in vacation traffic. They use Airbus 310 and Airbus 330 aircraft, the former being fairly old but we found the plane in very good condition considering it was 21 years old. In the interest of turning a profit they pack nine seats across in a 3-3-3 configuration which means everybody is a bit squished but the pitch wasn't too bad. The airline reviews aren't particularly complimentary but we found the service quite good and had no complaints. We left the gate at on time but came to a halt on the taxiway as the captain wasn't happy about number 1 engine. He kept everybody well informed for the next two hours as was we made our way back to the gate and various mechanics did their thing until the captain decided he was satisfied, which satisfied everybody else we think. Once airborne we made good time and arrived in Faro a little late but in one piece. As is common on vacation flights there was a round of applause on landing!

We had a package that gave us two weeks in two separate locations in the Algarve and a car for the whole period so the first action was to collect the vehicle, a Citroen C2, quite small but nippy and extremely economical on fuel. Since we weren't due to check into our first accommodation until early afternoon we spent a while looking around Faro.

This is a typical Portuguese town with an old section and a lot of development tailored to the vacation industry. We had our first pastry and coffee enjoying the local scene and a temperature somewhat greater than we had left behind. That augured well.

Faro Harbour

Entrance to Old Faro

The Bell Tower at the Taberna da Se - the Cathedral in Faro

Note the stork on the right hand side

Off to build a new nest

And here is where the stork was going to join his/her mate

In Old Faro

It was time to move on and we drove to the West to our first apartment in Luz. Luz is a smaller town just West of Lagos and about a hour if you take the freeway. We were staying at the Ocean Club Palm Bay and we were given a two bedroom apartment on the third floor. This overlooked the front and gave us a splendid view of the coast. The apartment was very well equipped, everything you might need. It had a good kitchen, a large living and dining room, a bathroom and the two bedrooms.