Optimus Alive 2014

We all love a good festival. Standing in a squalid pit with thousands of other mud soaked revellers with the pungent stench of Carling in your hair. And let’s not forget the acceptance of pooing in a bush. It’s as if we, the general public revert back to our primal caveman days, just this time with the addition of neon face paint.

I’m no exception myself. I love any excuse for a pint at 11am and living out a tent which wouldn’t even comfortably sleep a puppy. However this year I thought I’d try going a bit further afield for my live-music-day-time-drinking fix and ended up at Optimus Alive in Portugal earlier this month. The line-up included bands like the Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys, Sam Smith, Imagine Dragons and the Libertines to name just a few. There was even an onsite KFC which excited me no end (being the culture vulture that I ever so obviously am.)

 

 

The tickets to the festival were cheap as (KFC) chips too. A ticket for 3 days and camping was a measly £104. AND there was the guarantee of the blistering Portuguese sun all weekend long. Meaning that I got to prance around in my Havianas singing Brianstorm rather than uncomfortably trying to undo a wedgie under a wet poncho.

 

High lights of the festival included a huge range of different things to do aside from soaking up the sun and chilling out to some live bands and DJ sets. There was a salon come beauty parlour, delectable cocktail stalls, interactive game stalls and a fantastic pic n mix stand who are a good 40 odd euroes better off since my departure.  I’m a sucker for a strawberry bon bon, or 108.

 

I was in my element. In the day time before the festival I’d lounge around on the beach, have a swim and then muster up the energy to pop a bit of lippie on and head down to see the bands. The crowd was totally different to any other festival I’d been to before. I don’t think I saw one mosh pit, one pile of unruly vomit or any sign of excrement on the floor. It was just totally chilled and for the three days I was there I felt like I was in some sort of Enid Blyton novel. Lovely.

 

 

Flights to Lisbon can be super cheap too if you book in advance meaning that all in all the ticket price of this glorious Portuguese music jubilee can work out a heck of a lot cheaper than your standard British festival. Which makes me wonder if I’ll ever grace the British festival scene with my binge drinking, awful singing and bush pooing ways again? I kid, I kid, my singing’s not that awful. But anyway, what need would I have when I can go abroad and actually make a holiday of it too for the same price?