slow paced quiet village (Praia da Luz)

Member Name: eleanorofnaboo

Product:	Praia da Luz
Date:	29/11/01 (472 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: quiet, nice beach, lots of places to eat/drink

Disadvantages: hour drive from airport

Praia da Luz is a lovely little village just on the outskirts of Lagos. It is a bit off the beaten track and away from the more lively spots in the Algarve.

The first thing we spotted about Luz was the narrow cobbled roads – locals come flying up and down them and tremendous speeds but I found myself sitting at a lowly 20 or 30 km/hr (no wonder everyone kept over taking me!!) so that I wouldn’t bump parked cars or anything.

When you go into Luz you will spot a fantastic pizza restaurant – Pizza Panini – they do the best pizza and pasta in the world and it is really cheap. They also do take away which I think is handy if you are on a bit of a budget or the restaurant is busy. The restaurant is quite small (seats about 25 if I remember correctly) so it is probably pretty busy in the summer.

We are not ones for eating out really so the only other ‘eatery’ we went to in the village was the Luz Tavern. It was a typical ‘English’ pub and had Sky Digital TV and English staff, but it was nice. Unfortunately both times we tried to eat there they had something on or whatever and we didn’t get a meal!!

There seemed to be no ed to the number of places to eat in Luz. The people in the Tavern recommended ‘The Cave’ and ‘The Dolphin Restaurant’ to us but we didn’t end up trying them.

The beach in Luz was really nice. It wasn’t too big with cliffs/rocks at each end. Behind the beach was a promenade with a couple of gift shops and coffee shops. As it was November and too cold for the beach, there wasn’t much doing in those shops/coffee shops. I remember that one of them sold fantastic homemade mango ice-cream though – worth going back just for that!!

Luz also ‘allegedly’ has a cinema – all street maps have it marked and the holiday rep told us about it but we could not find it anywhere (and believe
me, we looked everywhere!!!) so we assume that it has closed down and no one told the reps and map makers! If I am wrong, please email and tell me where it is!!

Being a large village, Luz has all the usual amenities; laundrette, post office (correios – probably spelt that wrong but you will know when you see it!), couple of grocery stores (Alisuper) and the usual sort of resort things like campsites etc.

We stayed in really nice villas, Monte Sao Pedro, which are just before the main village. The villa complex has a swimming pool, bar, restaurant, kids play area, tennis courts, games room, mini-market. Each villa, although in the midst of the other villas is suitably secluded and when you look out of your patio in the morning you are not staring straight into someone else’s villa. I would highly recommend these villas to anyone who is planning their holiday and maybe spotted them in the brochure – the only though is that they are marble and pine throughout (which is gorgeous) and there are only two heaters in the building - fine for the summer probably but in the winter we were a bit chilly and needed to wrap up warm when sitting in the villa at night.

Luz also has a bigger complex (if not bigger then better known anyway) called The Ocean Club and that one features in quite a lot of travel agent brochures over here too. Obviously since we didn’t stay there I can’t comment on them!

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