Curral Velho

All Inclusive holidays are not my thing. And here’s for why.

Despite the promise of seven restaurants, realistically there is only one that is accessible every day. The others require reservations - and we could only get reservations at three of them on consecutive days at the end of the holiday. That means four days at the same buffet. One of the other restaurants is adult only, and the final one is actually only a much much smaller buffet that is closer to the pool. For the sharp eyed amongst you, you will realise that I have only pointed out six restaurants. That’s because there isn’t a seventh. They have just lied about it. To try and get away with it on their website, they list one of the restaurants twice.

The buffet isn’t awful. But it also isn’t great. Much of the stuff there simply doesn’t appeal to me. And the stuff that does is the stuff that seems to only be there for one day and is gone the next.

For me, this lack of variety, this lack of exploration, is in exact contrast to the whole point of a holiday for me. On no other holiday in my life have I visited the same restaurant three days in a row. It’s easy to lose track of days here and it’s hard to write about them, because nothing inherently different happens.

I say this, and yet they do have different entertainment each night. Tonight they had Rockstation on the main stage, and so we decided to sit and watch. I joked that it’d probably be something like Busted rather than real rock. Becky took offence at that.

Turns out I was wrong though - they opened with Sandi Thom’s “I wish I were a Punk Rocker”. What. On. Earth. They didn’t even sing it themselves. They just walked around on stage and occasionally threw out a very lacklustre dance move. It was the least rock and roll thing I’ve seen in a long time.Read more