So after a hectic year last year my parents offered to look after are son if we wanted to go away just by ourselves for along weekend. We jumped at the chance as we have not had more than a night away from our son in 10 years.

We decided to go to Barcelona easy we thought. It turns out not too many planes fly out of Faro to international destinations so we had to travel up to Lisbon. My husband was not too happy as he had never driven up to Lisbon.

I soon won him around so after abit of running around sorting the care for the cats and my son we set off up to Lisbon. An international airport you would have thought would be well signposted from the main motorway.

Not Lisbon anyway. Maybe it was just us but we did not see any signs until we were nearly at the airport and the planes were landing just the other side of the road we was on. As sure as eggs are eggs we missed the turn off.

A nice drive around Lisbon ensued but we eventually found the airport and parked the car in park 3. We organised the parking over the internet at Ana parking. We just made it to check after going backward and forward to the 2 terminals.

We were not having a good day. After check in we went for a quick bite to eat not realising our plane was boarding. We decided to check the board at 2.20pm and to our horror it was final call.

Even now we both say there was no call over the speaker system but who’s to know. After a short jog we got on the plane and found it was nearly full, talk about embarrassing. We were not the last people though so the embarrassment did not last too long.

After a short 1hr 45minute flight we landed in Barcelona. We were taken to our hotel by taxi and then got to the room and settled down. So tired we decided we wanted a Jacuzzi to chill after a pretty bad day.

Could my husband turn it on? No he could not so we tried and tried. To the untrained eye these things seem very hard to turn on. After some 30minutes we got a technician to come up and sort it.

2 minutes later he told my husband the button to push, in hindsight it is common sense but if you have not being in 1 before and we were very tired these things just do not jump into your head.

First day out we went to the centre of Barcelona and did abit of shopping then we treated ourselves to a meal at Hard rock Café. It was amazing the first time we had ever being but the atmosphere was great in there.

The memorabilia was outstanding and the food just as good. The burgers are to die for. We decided not to go out on the Saturday as I had a bad cold and were very tired from shopping.

On the Sunday we went for a walk on the marina and it was lovely. On the evening we went out for a lovely meal on the marina and it was very nice. On the final day we just went for a walk on the beach and had abit of tapas on the sea front.

Several Jacuzzi’s later we were ready to come back to Portugal realising how family orientated Portugal is in regards to the atmosphere when we were out at night. In Barcelona it seemed quite threatening near the nightclubs and late bars.

We arrived back on the Monday expecting a long journey out of Lisbon but it was fantastic abit of luck and we were on are way within 30minutes of landing. We were refreshed and ready for the next year full of enthusiasm and energy.

When I first moved to Portugal one of the first meals that I tried was Sardines in onion and tomato marinade (sardinhas de escabeche) and to say that it was absolutely beautiful would have to be something of an understatement.

I have got to admit though, my experience of eating sardines when I lived in the UK meant that I wasn’t really looking forward to the sardinhas de escabeche, as my only memories of anything which included sardines came out of a tin but these sardines in onion and tomato marinade tasted like nothing I had ever tasted before.

Anyway, for those of you were are interested in sampling the delights of  sardinhas de escabeche, here is a recipe which I can assure you, definitely does this dish justice.

Required Ingredients

First we need four to five tablespoons of the best quality olive oil that you can get

Around two cups of onions that are very finely sliced

Two tablespoons of chopped garlic

Enough chopped tomatoes to fill one cup

A small amount of chopped parsley

One or two bay leaves

A glass of dry white wine

A generous dash of vinegar

A teaspoon of paprika

Salt and pepper

The most important part of the dish, two pounds of sardines that are small to medium in size, your fishmonger will be able to advise on this

Oil in which to cook the sardines.

Instructions

Get yourself a big pan and heat up the olive oil. Then add the onions  and season with salt and pepper. Fry the onions on a low heat for around 5 minutes  and then add the  tomatoes along with the bay leaves and the garlic.

Continue to fry for another 2 minutes and add the wine, paprika and vinegar. When the liquid starts to simmer let it cook for around another 5 minutes. Get your sardines and make sure that you season them with salt and pepper and fry them separately for a couple of minutes.

Remove them from the pan and place them on paper lined plates to allow them to lose any excess oil. Now cover the sardines with the tomatoes and onion sauce that we prepared earlier and place in the fridge.

Now you should refrigerate for two days and make sure that when the dish is served, the marinade is poured over the sardines.

Now I am sure that you will agree that this recipe for sardinhas de escabeche  is not exactly challenging and most people could put it together without any problem

Now just imagine easting  sardinhas de escabeche with a chilled crisp white wine and if ever there was a dish that will remind you of enjoying a lovely meal in Portugal, then this is most definitely it.

There is one thing that I will absolutely guarantee though and that is that this dish of Sardines in onion and tomato marinade will a be about as far removed from the sardine dishes that you may be used to as it is possible to get, and it will be something that you will want to try time and time again, because it really is that good!

We have lived over here in the Algarve for about 3 and a half years now and we decided some time ago we would get anything electrical from here. Yes they are more expensive but with are freesat box from England we had problems with it.

The electric supply over here damaged the box so it didn’t work. We decided then not to risk getting anything new from the UK. And you also get generally a longer guarantee of 2 years on most things over here. But saying that we have an old English laptop which has not had any problems with charging it from are electric here.

 We did buy last year a Portuguese laptop as we needed an upgrade and found to our horror that windows 7 was just in Portuguese not an option to change it to the English version. To change the operator language we had to upgrade to windows 7 ultimate.

We eventually decided after almost 7 months to upgrade the windows 7 we had to ultimate, why now? I hear you ask because we got used to it but when you are getting warnings and other things it is so time consuming to find out what exactly they mean.

Google translate is not always very reliable with their translations. We paid the extra £125 for windows 7 ultimate from the UK Microsoft shop and received are key via email. Added the key and hey presto the laptop is now in English.

Just before Christmas we needed another upgrade as we use the computers everyday and my husband’s laptop is the old English one we have had for a few years and the hard disk was full and we had decided to try Staples.

We went up to have a look and did not realise they did a good range of them over here. We chose a Toshiba this time as the last one we bought was an Acer which we was not keen on and we had decided that when we got back we would upgrade to windows ultimate straight away.

We started it up and to my husbands delight the laptop offered us windows 7 in English and Portuguese and we had to choose which one we wanted to boot it up in. Great we thought we have just saved another £125.

We were quite sceptical at first but when it had installed it was all in English and we were delighted. The same laptop would not have cost much less in England so we were very pleased. We did not know that Toshiba offers this but Acer certainly did not.

If any of you have bought a laptop over here and had problems with the language let us know and also if you have bought a laptop over here and being offered both when you first turn on your laptop and it isn’t a Toshiba then leave a comment to let people know which companies offer this.

For the weekend of the New Year we have joined my parents at Camping Olhao and are staying at the best chalet on the campsite.

It is a lovely 2 bedroom though very cold on an evening at this time of year. So it is a case of having extra blankets on the bed to get through the night.

Though this morning I could tell it was bad because of how cold my drink was!!!!

Last night I enjoyed a lovely New Years Eve party at Camping Olhao hosted by my lovely dad “DJ Mr Tom”. It was a great evening with wonderful food and a great disco.

We started the evening with a nice buffet which included freshly carved meat, fresh bread, salad, scotch eggs and English style pork pies.

We all pitched in to make the buffet and Dominic a former chef got to grips with the meat machine and carved all the fresh meat.

And the sliced gammon was particularly beautiful and I have it on good authority that it was sourced from Iceland. I will certainly be heading back that way to get a gammon joint as it was very nice.

In the pudding department I enjoyed a really nice cheese cake though it was more like cream cake so the Wii Fit Plus will need a good airing later in the month.

After our meal my Dad – DJ Mr Tom put us through our paces with a wonderful disco. We danced the night away right into 2012 and beyond with some of the best ever dance tunes. Though the Portuguese put us to shame with their amazing Salsa moves – which reminds me that I need to get my Zumba out and learn some new moves!!!!

We also danced to some lovely slow and fast numbers and my husband Dominic does a great impression of Peter Kay with his dance to “on the way to Amarillo” and not to mention he soon has everyone on the dance floor to follow the actions to YMCA. Which shamefully I was a bit too tipsy to be able to do it on time!!!!

Though our son Kyle who is now 10, has decided that he has grown up enough for his mum and dad to embarrass him. I don’t think he likes it when his mum and dad dance to a slow number and have a kiss on the dance floor. Well I could have got out his baby photos in front of his New Year holiday romance. But I am not that cruel – though I am sure Dominic and my dad are!!!

I am not a big drinker so after having four Malibu and Coke (Portuguese measurements) I was stood there with the microphone belting out Frank Sinatra’s My Way and I can’t believe I still know it word perfect at the age of twenty-nine.

My husband was nice enough to grab the moment on camcorder though when I get a moment I will be deleting it from source.

This morning I must admit last night was the first disco I have been to since I was about 20 and I had a lovely evening so thanks to Mr Tom for making the night one to remember. It’s nice having my own personal DJ in the family.

It would be hard to find something better for New Years Eve in the Algarve where you can enjoy such lovely food and follow it up with a fantastic disco not to mention the price. For the price that people paid last night wouldn’t even cover a restaurant meal elsewhere in the Algarve so it was a real bargain and gave the chance for everyone to welcome in 2012 in style.

I originally stayed on Camping Olhao when we first arrived in the Algarve before we moved into our Apartment and in three years it hasn’t changed a bit and is a great place for a weekend away if you fancy some camping or you can stay in one of the chalets like we did.

And last but not least:

Happy New Year!!!!

It has finally reached that time of year to get all our food bits for Christmas and Dominic said that this year would be great with us having Iceland just down the road. We always seem to spend the entire Christmas period in the kitchen and by the end of it you are exhausted and beyond enjoying the holiday season.

So this year we thought well hey we have Iceland here now and it will make our life a lot easier especially with all the party buffet food that they have on offer.

And we also pre-ordered our Turkey from Iceland and it would be our very first fresh Turkey at Christmas time so we were really looking forward to it.

However we were in for a shock when we did our Christmas food shop at Iceland as they were missing about 30% of the items on our shopping list.

Items missing included:

-         Parsnips

-         Suede

-         Cocktail sausages

-         Cocktail sausage rolls

-         Frozen prawns

Many of you would say that the above are essential for most people at Christmas time and I certainly cant imagine Christmas without roasted parsnips so it was a real shame. So instead of having Christmas made so much easier as a mum going to Iceland I ended up having to visit several other supermarkets to get the produce.

When I did ask a member of staff they did mention that they had sold out and wouldn’t be getting any more stock in even though there was several shopping days still to run before Christmas day.

It seems like a real shame as this is Iceland’s first Christmas in the Algarve and is their chance to show their reliability and the smooth running that they should have of their store.

On a lighter note though I did notice that they over catered in the mince pie section and had so many that they were actually offering them for free as you walked through the door which was a nice gesture.

Though as a business it is all the little hiccups that you suffer when you are learning what the customers want and I am sure by next Christmas it will be much smoother. But I will make sure next Christmas I don’t rely on Iceland and then I wont be disappointed if some of the items are not available.

Also with my Turkey I asked for one size and ended up with one much bigger and having to pay the extra price so my 7€ turkey ended up costing 28€ so it was an expensive trip to the butchers.

So I ended up going home licking my wounds!!!!

Never mind, I am sure next Christmas will be much better and I am still eating my way through all the party packs of chicken and they are very tasty.

I am looking forward to heading back to Iceland in the new year though when it is less busy and the choice is better and I am sure by that point they will have had the chance to re-stock their shelves.