Faro; Monday, 20 February, 2012

I checked out of the hotel, leaving my luggage in the store, and headed into town and the train station to catch the train partway along the coast to the town of Tavira.

From the station I had a long wander around the town centre taking in the key sights of the castle and the Roman bridge that spans the river here.

I then had a very pleasant walk along the river to the point where it enters the sea, but arrived just after the hourly boat to the island that forms a natural barrier from the sea had left. Rather than waiting another hour I headed back into town for a very nice lunch.

After a very filling lunch and feeling really quite stuffed I wandered back through the town to the station to catch the train back to Faro.

Back in Faro, and using my very patchy Portuguese I managed to get a cab to take me back to the hotel and wait for me whilst I collected my bags, and then took me onto the airport.

A smooth journey through the airport and a smooth journey back to London stopped being quite so smooth when we got to baggage reclaim. It was nearly 40 minutes after landing before the first bags started to come round, and by the time I got to the train station there wasn’t a train back to Croydon for nearly half an hour.

By the time that arrived I had missed the last train of the night from Croydon so I had to treck up to Clapham, where none of the lifts were working and had a 20 minute wait there for one of the last trains of the night back home.

It was quite a difference to just a month previously when landing at almost exactly the same time I’d been home in 50 minutes, by the time I finally put my key in the lock at home it was nearly 2 and a half hours since I’d touched down.