Enjoy Spring Early in Portugal’s Sunny Algarve

The sun shines more than 300 days a year in southern Portugal’s Algarve, a coast lined with golden-sand beaches. The area’s busy season runs June–September, when hotels and attractions are crowded with families, but fewer family travelers visit in March to watch spring wildflowers covering the roadsides and almond trees blooming white across the hills.

Ocean water isn’t warm enough yet for swimming, although local kids take advantage of the gentle waves at Luz to practice surfing moves. Families picnic on the beach while young kids play in the sand and teens join a pick-up game of volleyball. Rainy days are rare, and although evenings are cool, daytime temperatures hover in the mid-60s, perfect weather for picnics.

This is also the best time for walking the trails along the clifftops to see the ever-changing views of the wildly eroded cliffs. These walks are much more comfortable in March than in the summer heat. On calm days, boat excursions from Lagos and Benagil reveal cliffs and sea caves invisible from the land above.

Families with older kids can explore these cliffs and caves in kayaks, easy to rent in most beach towns. On the western coast, which faces the open Atlantic, the surf is too heavy for all but experienced surfers, but watching them ride waves several times their own height is a popular spectator sport.

The Algarve is not all sea and sand. The coast is filled with history, especially of the Golden Age of Discovery, when Portuguese caravels sailed the seas. Many discoverers sailed from these ports, and Prince Henry the Navigator directed explorations from his school of navigation atop a lofty point in Sagres.

This far-western town makes a good base for families to explore this region, as it’s home to Martinhal Sagres Family Resort. Children aren’t just welcomed, they’re catered to with kids’ clubs, programs, sports and menus. Parents are pampered as well, with fine dining and a play area adjacent to the dining room where kids can play supervised while parents enjoy a leisurely dinner.

Not far from Sagres, Zoo Lagos is a low-key family zoo with about 150 different animal species in naturalistic habitats. Kids can get close to flamingos, a pigmy hippo, crocodiles, chimps, lynx, spider monkeys, capybara, lemurs, Capuchian monkeys, ocelot, flying foxes, cobras, marmosets, iguanas, meerkats and other exotic wildlife. Visitors can also watch as otters, pelicans, penguins and primates are fed.

The Algarve’s several waterparks are not open yet, but Zoo Marine in Albufeira is an aquarium with dolphin shows and regular live presentations with seals, sea lions, tropical birds and birds of prey.

Gardens are in bloom and orange groves are heavy with some of the world’s sweetest fruit (you can buy big bags of oranges by the roadside). More good news for families: Early spring hotel rates are far below those in the summer.