ALBUFEIRA MARINA - WHAT'S THERE?

Marina today. About half the places were open but there were few customers. The water was a murky green colour.

Those houseboat things are multiplying. The one on the left was occupied.

And the Insonia boat trip was operating, complete with masked and socially distanced crew and passengers.

A new view, from above the great wall, now that the landscaping work behind is almost finished.

Those houseboats are breeding. There are now six of them.

It was fairly busy down there yesterday. This large group were French.

Plenty of jet skis etc out on the water.

You can hire them by the day. 

The original plan was for a Lake Hotel, a strange plan for starters when there is so much natural water just metres away. Anyway this meant they needed to build up the land to make it flat, no doubt at great cost as it took them the whole of the first year moving earth to achieve that. However it was reported that prospective developers had concerns about who was going to pay to maintain the lake, which created doubts about the planned lake. At this point in time, if you could see the big picture surely you would have said OK let's forget all that and work with the existing incline, after all the Portuguese are amazing at building on inclines aren't they. However committees get on a "journey" and keep rolling forward so they decided to scrap the lake and have instead have a mirror of water (I think it loses something in translation). So now they have built a huge but very shallow water feature with fountains in the middle, giving us the poetic "mirror of water." The whole area has probably used more slabs and tiles than exists in the Old Town, so much for the environment, and still no signs of any developer wanting to come and build a hotel.

I guess the planners hadn't heard of Oceanville or the Casas da Marina development at the opposite end of the marina?

C'est la vie