One downside to Algarve tourism is that using the telephone is different to at home - and can work out ridiculously expensive!
Public pay phones should be avoided at all cost, since they're often not regularly maintained. Phones inside caf�s and bars are a better bet, since the phone is more likely to be in working order.
You can purchase pre-paid phone cards that are accepted by most public telephones in such places.
Unless you're loaded, you do not want to be making your telephone calls from hotels this is the most expensive way to make calls.
For numbers within Portugal, no local codes are used, but the full, 9-digit number must always be dialed.
When dialing the UK from Portugal, dial 44 and drop the first 0.
Emergency Number
Although the sensible thing would be to have a standard emergency number for every country, this is not the case. Should you unfortunately need the emergency services, there number is 112.
Algarve tourism as with any holiday should be relaxing experience, however if things go really pear-shaped while you're on holiday, you might need the services of your Consulate. For UK citizens, that's 282-417800 (Portim�o), and for visitors from the US, 21-7273300 (Lisbon).