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Algarve travel guide An insider's guide to Algarve, featuring the region's best hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, attractions and things to do, including how to travel there and around. By Mary Lussiana, Telegraph Travel's Algarve expert. Click on the tabs below for the best places to stay, eat, drink and shop, including the best things to do and the best beaches. Travel journalist Mary Lussiana has lived on the Algarve since 2001, from where, in between trips to other corners of the world, she is a regular contributor to English newspapers and magazines on the region's new hotels, best restaurants, hidden beaches, top spas and more. Why go? You could sum up simply by saying the light. For the light on the Algarve is fantastic. To draw the curtains each morning and see the high blue skies and the bright, energising light never fails to raise my spirits, even after 12 years of living here. But there is much more than that. It’s a region of hidden delights, of golden beaches framed by beautifully wrought limestone rocks, of small, simple restaurants where the taste of the fish – just caught, just grilled and drizzled with a local olive oil – will pull you back time and time again. There are so many layers to the Algarve. Inland, up in the hills of Monchique, you will see a way of life that has disappeared from much of Europe. Days revolve around the seasons – killing the pig and gathering provisions for winter; collecting chestnuts and picking berries to make the local firewater. Olives, oranges, carobs and almonds are pulled from the trees and sold at markets. In villages of small cobbled streets, you’ll find whitewashed houses, cafes with cloth-capped men having their bica (espresso) and women grilling sardines in the streets. The sea is part of a different layer of Algarve life – one that’s also closely bound to nature. You can see locals wading into the Atlantic at low tide to find cockles and barnacles, and all along the coast, fishermen, who learnt the trade from their fathers, go out for squid and octopus, for sardines and tuna. Against this backdrop of real life is the layer for holidaymakers. By the fringes of the sea, in the centre of the Algarve, resorts line the cliffs – some are attractively set in lush gardens, such as Vila Joya or Vila Vita Parc (see Hotels); others (not included here) are soulless, concrete monstrosities. Read more...http://www.telegraph.co.uk