What the Season Does

The Algarve has a public face and a private one, and they don't correspond to each other particularly well.

The public face is summer. The beaches at capacity, the coast road slow, the restaurants fully booked a week ahead. It's not unpleasant, there's an energy to it that has its own appeal, but it's not the place. It's a version of the place operating at unusual intensity for the benefit of people who are mostly somewhere else for the other ten months.

The private face is everything else. February when the almond blossom comes out across the eastern hills and the days are warm and clear. April when the wildflowers are going in the cliffs and the water is cold but the coast is yours. November when the light is low and golden and the Ria Formosa is full of birds passing through and you can sit outside for lunch in a jumper and feel like you've found something most people don't know about.

I live here year-round so I have access to all of it. The visitors I enjoy most are the ones who come back in the quiet months. They tend to be more curious, more willing to drive somewhere without a confirmed plan, more interested in what a place is actually like rather than how it performs in photographs.

The Algarve performs very well in photographs. It's considerably more interesting than that.