anyone know about portugal??

[pieceofcake]

looking for a holiday in 4* ish accom. haven't got a clue where to start? quite fancy portugal but open to any suggestions for nice beach hol with 5 month old. please help!!

Alvor in the algarve is very nice, beautiful lush sandy beaches and a pretty fishing harbour, more low key than praia de roche and them, still lots of resteraunts and bars,shops, very child friendly..we stayed in quinta nova apartments which were very very nice, but that was some time ago now and dont know what rating there were/are.

Don't know Portugal well enough but can recommend pleasant places in Spain. Javea, on Spain's east coast is a lovely low key family resort. it has a parador. If you don't know about them, they're luxury hotels run by the Spanish state. They're often lovely buildings and/or in beatiful locations. They often do deals out of season. Here's their Javea site:
www.paradores-spain.com/spain/pjavea.html
To go there, you'd fly to Alicante.

Another wonderful parador is at Baiona, a pretty resort town in Spain, but not far from Portugal. Here's the site:
www.paradores-spain.com/spain/pbaiona.html
For this, you'd fly Ryanair from Stansted to Santiago de Compostela, or you could fly to Oporto in portugal.

We stayed in Portugal earlier in the year with DD's (4 and 2) and stayed here We had a great time. Its about 1km from the beach and there is a bus that runs to and from every day (however there are steps down to the beach). The beach is Faleisia beach and is lovely, really clean, no pebbles. There are some restaurants and supermarket within easy walking distanct and there is a bus stop which takes you into Albufeira (should you wish to go) every hour (though cheaper by tax really). We would love to go back again. We hired a car for 10 days which helped so we could get out and about. Accommodation was superb and really really spacious too.