I arrived in Fuseta on the 3rd of January 2026 with one carry-on backpack and a day pack. I left thirteen weeks later with slightly less than I came with — a number I’m both proud of and slightly embarrassed by, because the things I left behind were mostly things I never should have packed. This is what I carried, what got used, and what was, on reflection, peak German overreaction.

The headline is short. For a January Algarve stay you need fewer layers than the German weather forecasting instinct suggests and more sun protection than the calendar implies. The body of work you’re doing is laptop-shaped, which keeps the carry-on viable for stays well beyond two weeks if you commit to one.

What was actually in the bag

The full carry-on inventory, more or less from memory:

  • Laptop, charger, one USB-C hub, noise-cancelling headphones.
  • Three merino t-shirts, two long-sleeve merino tops, one merino sweater.
  • One pair of trousers I worked in, one pair of running shorts, one pair of swim shorts.
  • Two pairs of jeans (one of which I never wore — see overreactions).
  • One light shell jacket, one fleece mid-layer.
  • Running shoes, one pair of casual leather sneakers, flip-flops.
  • Five days of underwear and socks. The house had a washing machine.
  • A small dop kit. The Portuguese supermarkets have shampoo and toothpaste.
  • A reusable water bottle, a small notebook, a pen, a paperback.

The day pack carried the laptop on the plane and was the going-out bag for the duration.

The structural insight: merino in three weights gets you through 5°C mornings and 24°C afternoons without changing the underlayer, and for a stay where laundry is daily-available you don’t need redundant copies of anything.

The weather that actually showed up

The Algarve in January–April is not Berlin in January–April, which is the part nobody who hasn’t been there believes. The weeks ran 5–17°C in week one, climbing through 9–17°C in February, finishing at 11–24°C by the last week of March. There were two genuinely bad weather stretches — week five logged 88 mm of rain over seven straight wet days and 94 km/h gusts; week six and parts of week seven were similarly wet. Most of the rest of the time was dry and pleasant.

What that means for packing: you do need a real rain shell. You do not need a German winter coat. The fleece mid-layer plus the shell handled every cold morning. The merino sweater handled the evenings. The German winter coat I almost packed would have spent thirteen weeks in a wardrobe.

What got used every day

The genuinely high-utility items:

  • Running shoes: out the door at 7am for the Ria Formosa loop, then back into the wardrobe by half past. Used four days a week minimum.
  • The shell jacket: light enough to throw over a t-shirt, real enough to handle 88 mm of rain.
  • The merino layer system: t-shirt, long-sleeve, sweater. Three pieces, infinite combinations, none of them ever smelled bad.
  • Flip-flops: not because of the beach. Because the coliving had wet feet everywhere — pool, garden, kitchen.
  • The laptop and noise-cancelling headphones: the office for thirteen weeks.

For employed readers this matters because anything you packed and didn’t use is something your employer’s per-diem isn’t paying for. For freelance readers the same logic applies via your own time — the hour spent repacking the bag at week three is an hour you could have billed.

The German overreactions

In rough order of regret:

  • A second pair of jeans. I wore one pair on the plane and packed a second. The second pair never came out of the bag. In a place where you wear shorts more days than trousers, one pair of jeans is plenty.
  • A wool hat. I wore it twice, both times badly. Berlin instincts about January cold do not transfer to a coastline where the wind is the main complaint and the temperature is mild.
  • A €120 fleece mid-layer. The €25 fleece I owned would have done the same job. The €120 one is for German mountain weekends, not Algarve coastal mornings.
  • A full first-aid kit. The Portuguese pharmacies are everywhere, well-stocked, and the pharmacists speak English when needed. Travel ibuprofen and a few plasters is enough for a trip that does not involve hiking off-trail.
  • A power adapter. Portugal uses the same plug as Germany. I packed an adapter for “just in case.” Just in case never came.

What I didn’t pack and should have

A short list, in order of severity:

  • Sunscreen for daily use. I packed a small travel tube and ran out by week three. The Algarve UV in February is higher than the German instinct suggests — UV index 4 in Feb–March, well above the Berlin Feb baseline — and even a 30-minute morning run accumulates exposure over thirteen weeks [source: weather-atlas.com]. Buy locally; the Portuguese supermarkets stock proper factor 50.
  • A small foldable dry-bag. The coastal weather will catch you out at least once with a laptop in the day-pack and a sudden downpour. A €10 dry-bag would have removed the stress.
  • Better insoles for the running shoes. After 44 years the feet have opinions. Six weeks of daily morning runs surfaced them.

When this would have failed

This packing list assumes a coliving or apartment with a washing machine, a January-to-April travel window, and a trip where you don’t plan a weekend in Lisbon or Porto that needs different clothes. If you’re moving between three accommodation types and need to be presentable in a Lisbon meeting on the fifth night, the carry-on is the wrong constraint.

It also assumes you are comfortable wearing the same three merino t-shirts in a rotation visible to the same ten people every day. The coliving cohort does not care. A more conventional work environment might.

The right configuration is a single carry-on for the laptop and the office, a single layer system that handles 5–25°C, and the discipline to leave the German winter coat at home. The Algarve is not Berlin, even when it rains for a week straight.