Hotels near Faro Airport - FAO, Faro

This was a break where 14 friends got together in 2 different hotels. Faro is a great base for exploring the area. Public transport was used by us, bus and train. We also used the boat to get to Faro beach. Plenty of places to eat and drink. We did the 'free' city walk to get our bearings and to find out more about Faro. People were friendly and welcoming.

We stayed in Faro overnight to catch an early morning flight. We went to the historical part of town and walked around. It was fine but rather unremarkable. However, there is a large shopping center in Faro with an Auchan Supermarket. This shopping center was fantastic, beautiful with nice water features and a large food center with relaxing outdoor seating.

Quiet mainly residential area. Beautiful long sandy beaches Long board walks that connect beaches. Great walks and cycling in area A trip to Loulé is a must and Faro old town and beach is easily accessible. Great restaurants all along beach.

It was way more expensive that we anticipated especially for Portugal. I guess they live on tourists from Germany or France that visit once, and have bigger salaries than average Spanish person. Personally I didn't like it much. It is messy and dirty, not taken care of. There are some cool bars and food and wine is super good, but again...expensive, and really not much to do there. One day and you can see the whole city. We used the good weather to go near Portimao to see the caves, but lunches are till 2:30! Dinners are till 9/9:30, so plan ahead, and if you want to see the caves by boat, go earlier and check the tides. There are way nicer places around.

Not child/ family friendly. Outdoor pool freezing. Indoor pool reserved for adults only even though when we booked it had children’s times scheduled. Main reason we booked was for the indoor pool. Very isolated if you don’t have a car. Otherwise everything was as expected in a 5star hotel.

We picked Faro to minimise the journey time from the airport, even though it seemed from what we could see online that Faro was not the most popular Algarve town but in the end we liked Faro a lot and would happily go again. It has good easy train access to other parts of the coast and we explored both Eastwards and Westwards as it was our first trip to the Algarve. There are plenty of restaurants and some rather smart shops to explore. The Old town is interesting and we didn't manage to see it all. The marina is a great place to linger and take photos. We took the ferry to Faro beach through the shallow wetlands for just a few Euros. Next time we will learn how to use buses.