Day 2 - Saturday 5 August

After a good night's sleep we awoke and drew back the curtains to be greeted by the familiar sight of the magnificent Los Gigantes cliffs.

Restaurant cleaning team hard at work already

Now I believe that this craft is affectionately known as the "Jolly Roger" and it plies its trade four times a day from the harbour by the Poblado Marinero complex which was the first place we ever stayed at in the Canaries in 1985.  Elizabeth's parents went back there in 1989 with a friend of theirs, Frank, when Catherine was very small and we stayed at home.  Frank decided to take a trip on the said ship.  Now, whatever the price of the trip, we think it will be too much as the ship bobs about like I don't know what, there's no shade anywhere on board and they ply passengers with rum at regular intervals. Needless to say, when it returned to base, Frank staggered off, clearly the worse for wear, concluding that it had been a great experience - if only he could remember it of course.

We soon went up to the top of the hotel restaurant for breakfast.  Think cruise ship and breakfast was roughly the same except for no smoked salmon – boo, hiss – but in a much more spacious environment.  But there was unlimited cava, so that was some consolation and the views remained superb.

We’re still very much finding our way around this place and it doesn’t help that there are two types of lift each serving certain floors only.  The receptionist said that the hotel was built in 1987, two years after we first stayed down the road at the Poblado Marinero apartments, but neither if us can remember what, if anything, was here at that time, although it is a prime spot so we can only think that there was something.  And yet the hotel has such a new look about it, it’s easy to think that it was built only in the past couple of years.

We decided to have a walk out. The area around the hotel is fairly quiet with a few shops and restaurants. We walked along the prom until it ran out and then returned to the hotel for a drink in the pool bar. We are on half board so decided to go to a local pizzeria for lunch. E had a calzone and G had a pizza - huge portions and change out of €20! We were so full! We went back to our room for a siesta.

Part of the breakfast offering

The "Jolly Roger" rerturns to port

Not a good sight but it is a reminder that this is what non-vegetarians actually eat.

Note the clouds in the distance, driven by the Passat trade winds in this part of the world

Day 1 - Friday 4 August

We set off a little after our planned departure time, dropped off a couple of plants for Sarah to look after and went on our way.  Soon after we realised that neither of us had picked up our holiday folder, the key missing information being in which car park we’d booked the car into at East Midlands Airport.

Yes, we could have rooted through our emails to find the booking confirmation, but it was a good while ago and we thought it quicker to return home and start again.

So it was time to hit the M1.  Inevitably it was no surprise to see the overhead gantry signs saying that there was a delay on the road near Nottingham – 20 minutes or so.  It seems there had been a collision but that it had been cleared away and we joined the backlog of traffic which was stop/start for a while.

We arrived at the airport to realise that the long stay car parks were a long way away from the terminal building and we wondered why we were there for a 7-8 day stay when we had previously stayed in Short Stay Car Park 3 – walking distance to the terminal building for a 10-night stay on Lanzarote a couple of years ago.

We went to check in and there were loads of desks open so that was no queue for us and through we went to security. No problems there except that Graeme had decided late on to take his big camera and was pulled over to show it to one of the security staff so that she could see that it was indeed nothing more than that.

Time to buy a meal deal to eat on the plane (no free food or drink on board) and have a stop at Starbuck's for a hot chocolate and a bun or so.

The reduced pressure on the plane had clearly made my bag of crisps even bigger!

By this time the board said that they were boarding at Gate 11 and on we went to join a modest queue as they were already boarding.  No air bridges at East Midlands but we were soon striding across the tarmac and on to the plane.  We had a window seat and one next to it over the wing as part of a 3-3 configuration.  Elizabeth sat next to the window while a woman in cycle shorts sat next to me in the aisle seat.  She was with a similarly dressed woman who sat opposite plus two small children next to her.

And off we went.  Depending on whether the plane was scheduled to leave at either 1525 or 1535 (it did change a bit in the build up to the day), we left the ground either 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late.  It’s certainly not that sort of airport where your plane sets off from the gate then seems to go on endless tours of the airport taxiways in an apparently endless queue of planes.  As soon as the pilot reached the end of the taxiway, we turned on to the main runway and we were off.

It was a pleasant flight with no turbulence and, in what seemed like no time, we were halfway there.  We knew that they have no on-board entertainment, so we came well prepared, except that for different reasons, neither of us was able to have a wired link between our tablets and our headphones.  Notes to selves for next time!

We landed just about 4 hours after we had departed and were soon down the steps and on to the tarmac once again.  We joined the line of ‘non-EU’ visitors to be met with eGates which came as a surprise (this is Spain after all) and we also had to give a fingerprint of each forefinger.  If only we hadn’t left the EU it would be different and next year we’ll have to pay for a sort of EU visa.

We were told to go to bus stop 17 for our transfer to the hotel and I joked that it was bound to be the only stand without a bus – and so it was!  There was a rep there who pointed out that there would only be 8 of us in this group so it would be a small bus and that the driver would come for us when he arrived.  Then she added that four of our group had taken a taxi which left us and another couple for what was fast becoming a private transfer!

The other couple were to be dropped off at a hotel in Adeje and so they were and then on we went to Santiago and the Barcelo hotel.  By the time we arrived it had finally dropped dark, so we couldn’t see the view from our room.  The Canaries remain on the same time zone as the UK despite their westerly location and it tends to get light around 7am and to get dark whenever, depending on the time of year.  This must be to appeal to the tourists who are the life blood of these islands.  We often say to ourselves that it the weather here ever changed, then how would they all survive economically?

We had arrived around 9.30pm and at check in the lady on the desk told us that the restaurant would close at 10pm so we dropped our bags in our room and headed up to the main restaurant at the top of the hotel.  Things were winding down a little by then but there was more than enough availability and a modest meal and a beer seemed to get us back on an even keel.

 

All in all, it had been a painless trip and we felt in no way exhausted as the day drew to a close.  By the time we hit the sack it was midnight and neither of us took any rocking.

Non-reclining chairs