Dunas do Alvor Portugal

Accommodation
The apartments are well located between beach and resort centre. Certainly better located than many of the others featured in brochures.
We had a 1 bedroomed apt for 4 of us. I normally go for two bedrooms but couldn't get a 2 bedroom apt. However it was spacious enough. The living room was big enough to leave the two extra beds up at one end, and then there was a sitting area with T.V, and a kitchen area with table and chairs at the other end. The bedroom had lots of storage, enough for 4 people's clothes so we didn't have to live out of suitcases. There is a fridge freezer, electric hob and fairly limited utensils. I asked for an electric kettle but failed to get one. I also asked for a wake up call for the morning of our departure and that failed to happen.

We overlooked the street and I had no problem with noise.

The pool area looked attractive but there were not enough sunbeds. All the beds were taken by 9am and who wants to set the alarm on holiday?

Also there were no chairs around the pool. I often prefer to sit in a chair by the pool but this was not possible. The water was chilly.
All of the accommodation is on the 1st , 2nd and 3rd floors. There are no ground floor apartments. The ground floor consists of business outlets including cafes, a shop, and a travel agent who did car hire, tours etc.

Resort
I thought this was a lovely resort. It has the perfect combination of unspoilt cobbled streets with lots of restaurants and bars. Not a huge variety of evening entertainment but most pubs had live music after 10pm. I would have liked something earlier for families who want the kids in bed before 11pm. We loved the Irish Inn.

Credit cards.
I am used to paying for meals etc on plastic and just using cash for small stuff. We found that many of the restaurants did not take credit cards which is inconvenient.
I tried several restaurants and was only disappointed with Vagabonds. It was the most expensive meal of the fortnight, the food was average, the portions small and they ripped us off on the bill.
China Garden was excellent, good service, great food, especially the crispy duck.
The Albor Cafe has a great location and we loved the food.
Al Dente- we went on our first night and couldn't get a table. Didn't get around to it again until the end which was a shame because the food was wonderful and we would definitely have gone there a lot. You need to book or go before 7.30pm.

Beach

What a fabulous beach. It's very deep and goes on for miles so never crowded. We seemed to have it to ourselves some days even in July. It was very clean with no litter or cigarette ends to be seen. There are lifeguards every 100 meters or so and you can hire sunbeds for 10 euros a day or 6 for half a day. We used the blue and white beds near the Cinco Quorona restaurant. Included in the cost was the use of proper showers at the restaurant which was very useful. The sunbed attendant was lovely and helped my son when he cut his foot on a rock.
We went to Slide and Splash Water Park. You need to take something to sit on and an umbrella if you want shade as there were no sunbeds.
Our best trip was out to sea on the dolphin safari. The one in Alvor was out of action and we booked through the travel agent in the Dunas apartments to go from the marina at Praia de Roche. It cost 160 euros for the 4 of us and was well worth it. The boat trip alone was exciting as you are on a speedboat sat astride benches (not suitable for the very young ). We saw lots of dolphins in their natural environment. Forget the zoomarine and do this instead.