It had to happen in the end

Been offline for more than a week now, not had much to show or tell because we've only just got out of jail, COVID jail. Oops, well it had to happen in the end. We're all good, Ellison had what seemed to be a very bad cold, I had barely that. We've obeyed the local rules which say isolate for 7 days which wasn't much of a hardship in the Algarve to be honest. But it did have the knock on effect of stopping our chums coming out to see us and we could only tell them the day before they were flying out. We were looking forward to seeing them so it did make us feel proper sad and guilty. We know it can't be helped but you still feel bad :(

We don't know when we caught it, but just after we arrived and got settled into our apartment we had a message from our chums that they had both tested positive. Ellison also had symptoms so we tested and bingo, full house, we all 4 had it. We've never tested positive before so I'd imagined the lateral flow tests would be pretty binary, but not so. No idea whether it's the amount of COVID (one of my brainy chums calls it 'viral load') but we both started off with feint lines which got stronger then became feinter again before disappearing. In case anyone's interested this is what it looked like:

Anyhow, all good now, out of COVID jail and considering ourselves very lucky, after all it could have been Delta before we were vaccinated!

So how have we usefully used out time since we've been allowed out? Well we did this the first lunch:

And of course your first lunch out had to be Gambas!

And then yesterday was our first day exploring, we've got a car here and intend to make use of it. We ended up at the beautiful Carvoeiro, just east of Portimao. There's no doubt the Algarve has to be one of the most picturesque coasts in the world. No more words, just piccies of Carvoerio and Algar Seco (and it's board walk) just outside of the town.

More if I've got more to show and tell, but will try not to bore you for the sake of writing a blog.

Saude!

PS

As some of you know I'm learning Greek with Duolingo. Thought I'd have a bash at Portuguese as well whilst I'm here :)