The sun was shining, the villa was gorgeous, we spent endless days by the pool, played Come Dine With Me at night and I now have a tan to die for.... we have had a brilliant week, Albufeira is beautiful.
I have spent the week sunbathing, swimming, doing yoga in the garden and eating my body weight. Sheer bliss! I even finished a book for the first time in years that wasn't Bridget Jones' Diary which is quite an achievement let me tell you. The book was of course Confessions of a Shopoholic... whatever else?!
On the money front I had been such a good girl. All we'd bought was the food shop for the week and had been out to eat a couple of times. On Thursday I still had 200 euros left, which is very good as I had taken 340 altogether and this was 5 days into our holiday.
As it turns out it rained all day on Thursday so we decided that it would be a good idea to take a trip to Algarve Shopping.
I emerged from said shopping centre with the following items:
- 1 strapless navi and cream dress from Stradivarius - Obviously a must have as it had a millitary detail front with gold buttons and also you can't buy it in the UK. Plus it's so cute!
- 1 Christmas style cardigan from Zara - who knows if you can buy it in this country and who cares?! It is honestly the most amazing cardigan ever. It did cost 50 euros so I did try to leave it in the shop but I almost had heart failure walking out and had to go back and buy it. I have worn it every day ever since, even on the plane. Bob's reaction on meeting us from the airport was "Bloody hell Em.... did you get that out of a Christmas cracker?!" I don't care because I like my reindeer!
- 2 cute necklaces from Accessorize - fair enough I really could have bought them in the UK but we had to queue for ages for a taxi so I decided that I needed to pay them a visit!
As I only allowed myself to spend 100 euros that day I came in well on budget. I did buy another jumper but I decided that it wasn't a to die for item and could therefore be taken back. So anyway.... what with my thrifty money saving for the rest of the week, I still had 60 euros left at the airport, that was until I got to the duty free.
Duty free is like heaven for me.... I love perfume and I love makeup, especially the expensive stuff. So I try on about 5 different perfumes (by the end of which I can't smell any of them) settling on a 100ml bottle of my trusty old favourite Stella McCartney, Stella as my treat for saving money. This actually costs 72 euros so I have to pay a little on my card but I figure that is fine as I was paid on Friday.
I also have a weakness for lipgloss, I have loads of them. I do realise that I only have one set of lips but obviously a girl a different one to suit her mood. I perruse the shelves picking up several along the way, Lancome, Clinique, Channel, finally settling on a pink little Dior number as my favourite one that the girls got me for my birthday last year has sadly passed and needs replacing. So that's a total of 91 euros, I think I'm done and walk away from the store only to find that we are missing Nush so we head back on in to find her.
So we find Nush and she utters the magic words.... "have you seen the Kinder Buenos?"
For those of you who don't know me very well.... I love Kinder chocolate. When I was in the sixth form Sam and I used to eat several Kinder eggs a week and created a little town called Sandbyville in our form tutor Mr Sandby's room on one of the shelves, he loved it. Anyway, Nush shows me to the most amazing display that I have ever seen. There are Buenos, Kinder sticks, Schokobons.... everything that Kinder have ever made. I quickly decide upon a MASSIVE bag of Schokobons and a slab of Kinder sticks thenmake my way to the check out for a second time.... whoops!
The worst thing about all this is that I have bought all of these wonderful things from Duty Free and have left them in the back of Bob's car! Rubbish!
So now I'm at home, it's great to be back and to see everyone, but the trouble is that I can already feel the post holiday blues setting in. True to character this usually means a shopping trip of some variety is in order.
So I met Lauren for a catch up lunch at Enigma, after which we pay a quick visit to New Look. About 20 minutes and £50 later I am now the proud owner of the beautiful blouse that I had walked away from a couple of weeks ago and a pair of brown cowboy ankle boots.... will I never learn?
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