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The Bluffer gets some summer sun in the Algarve and in Seville

G o mbeannaí Dia daoibh agus bhur gcéad fáilte isteach chuig The Bluffer's Guide to Irish.

Well, unbeknownst to yez, the Bluffer was away on this hollyers last week and well deserved it was too! This page doesn't write itself, you know, and his silky skills are in high demand elsewhere so the Bluffer was buailte amach - knackered and needed his Duracells recharged.

He read of holidays for people who go ar saoire - on holidays and before you could say "no supplement" no supplement" he had a flight booked and a hotel sorted out in an Phortaingéil - Portugal. (Chuir mé eitilt in áirithe means a booked a flight so you would use this phrase for booking anything.) Three weeks later and he was sitting by a pool in the Algarve with the stated aims of codladh - sleep, léamh - reading, snámh - swimming, eating fish and going for walks.

Mission accomplished. He also was able to take dhá thuras - two trips, the first to an Spáinn and the beautiful city of Sevilla.

What a city! The ailtireacht -architecture was stunning, the atmosphere was beoga - lively around its al fresco bars and cafés and the teocht

- temperature was 22 degrees - and the beer was cheap.

Seville is great because it's flat, most of the must-see sites as well as the shopping area are all in a central location. The stay was short, four hours when four days wouldn't have been enough, but on leaving we headed in a circle round the buildings that were used in the great Latin-American Expo in 1929 with each of the houses built in the style of the separate countries, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and the United States. Seville's ardeaglais - cathedral has 80 chapels inside it and ... which just has to be seen to be believed.

The other tour was called Historical Algarve because the Bluffer has always been fascinated by na Múraigh - the Moors who ruled parts of Spain from 722 until the 15th century.

We started off at Silves which was príomhchathair - the capital of the Moors in the Algarve and I always try to imagine what everyday life was like 1,000 years ago as we walked around its impressive Muslim caisleán - castle or life around the nearby cathedral build after the Christian reconquest. From these stunning sites, after a lemon tea in the beautiful heat, we headed up the Monchique mountain to Foia, an pointe is

airde - the highest point in the Algarve, for a liqueur tasting, followed by an amazing lunch. Then it was off to Lagos where we saw St Anthony's Golden Church as well as Europe's first margadh sclábhaithe - slave market. It was sobering for our first world minds to imagine the horrors that went on here, starting in 1444. Finally, we headed toward "the end of the world" as Cape Saint Vincent, Europe's most south-westerly point, is known to the locals. Bualadh mór bos - a big round of applause to Follow Me Tours who organised the trips.