“Business today consists in persuading crowds” T.S.Eliot. 

Well this may not be a popular post today! Usually a visit to the Fatacil at Lagoa municipal ground (which runs this year until Sun 28th August) is one of the highlights of our August holiday. So I am not sure what was different this year – perhaps it’s because we’re not ‘tourists’ anymore, or that we don’t need to buy gifts or jewellery to take back to the UK; or that we are not planning any more ‘projects’ on our house in the foreseeable future….. but I have to be honest and say we were very disappointed, and only stayed for an hour….

So here goes – first the basic information – well it costs 5 Euros per person to get in, it opens at 6pm this year (previous years it was 4pm so that confused people!) and the parking around the main roads to the ground are always manic (it’s always fun to see just where people decide to abandon their car (middle of the road anyone?) and it is always crowded with lots of people…

There are a wide range of stalls selling things – you have smaller ‘craft’ type stands on one side with smaller trades and individuals, with some people demonstrating their craft… 

And lots of businesses selling everything from cars, mobile phones, hot tubs, builders, pools, decking, and beds that go up and down…

And this year the elephant exhibition that has been travelling around the Algarve landed – they are lovely and worth time looking at the very detailed art work on them…

The Fatacil does have live animals, mainly horses, and we saw some trotting around, but unlike a UK County Show type event you don’t have the same ‘showring’ feel to it with animals being presented and judged… there are also lots of stalls selling ‘animal products’ and tack etc…

There are some live animals for children to see (cows, goats…) and the Aquapark brought their parrots along…

And there are any number of food stalls – you can go from snack food to restaurant quality food across the park…

And there is supposed to be live music (starts about 1030pm) every night – except we went on Tuesday night and there was no music advertised…

And there are pretty lights once it goes dark … and that’s about it really…. so I’m struggling with what else to say – I’d love someone who went for the first time this year to post a comment and let me know what they thought of it… perhaps it’s just us and we’re getting tired of the same… but it just all felt a bit ‘tired’ and ‘samey’ …. and the queues for food were crazy by about 8.30pm (so eat early if you go!) – so we left and went to our local ‘prato do dia’ restaurant and had a lovely quiet meal instead….