Happy Birthday, Reprise

Day 22 (February 23, 2011)

Itinerary: 3 trains to Marseille, France

Today is the first of our two travel days to get back home to our respective countries. This of course means that I don't have many exciting stories to share with you. We had a very smooth series of train rides from Barcelona to Marseille. The two transfers were easy and before we knew it, we were back at the hotel in Marseille picking up the big, black action packer/care package I packed 3 weeks ago.

Tonight we opened up the care package so that Mark could finally open his birthday presents. Rather than carry around the weight on vacation, we left them here in the hotel in storage. Mark had fun trying to guess what was in each package before he opened it and I had fun trying to remember what was in there. He now has lots of books to read and some new toys to play with.

We tried to hook up with Wii for some evening gaming, but somewhere along the way the converter must have been fried somehow. We blew the fuse for the whole hotel room when we plugged it in. After restoring the power, we blew the fuse again trying again a second time. Haha, I'm sure the hotel staff wasn't too happy with us after that. Mark will see if the converter is the actual problem when he gets back to camp. Who knows. I don't think I'll plug the Wii into any important sockets right away either just in case it's that power supply. We used everything just fine in Barcelona, though on the last night none of the outlets were working in the room when we left. We must have left a wake of blown fuses.

Dinner at the hotel was pretty standard and we struggled with going back to French. I'm still stuck in Spanish mode and Mark says all the French he's learned over the past few months went poof out of his head. Gracias, I mean, Merci. Si, I mean, oui.

Tomorrow I need to be up early at 5am to catch my flight and we will have our sad goodbye. Leaving my husband in a hotel room to catch a flight to a different country is not really the best end to a vacation. We had an absolute blast together over the past 3 weeks. It was easy to forget about real life and just live in the moment, be it on the beach, or in an orbital hotel room in the sky.

We really had great weather on vacation. I can only think of one rainy day. For the most part it was only chilly in the evenings and even then only in Barcelona did it get down in the 40s. Many of our island days were sunny, 80 degrees and breezy.

Thank you Facebook, Dave, and Bobby especially for providing us with the idea to go to the Canary Islands. We probably would have never have thought of it on our own.

Flamenco

Day 21 (February 22, 2011)

Itinerary: Sleep in and play Wii, Purchase train tickets for tomorrow, Mirador Colom, Mark's haircut, Picasso walking tour through city and museum, window shopping, dinner and Flamenco show.

Today feels like our last real day of vacation. After this we will be traveling, first to Marseille via train and then home to our respective countries. So, to celebrate, we decided to stay in and play Wii all morning. The tv in our orbital hotel room is the largest we've had this trip and the bed was very comfortable as well. We won't be able to finish Kirby's Epic Yarn on this trip, but we've had fun trying.

We emerged from the hotel around lunch time and first went in search of rail tickets. A few days ago we tried to buy our rail tickets to Marseille at the Spanish Renfe ticket office but were told that they were unable to sell us the French portion of the trip. Tourist information was not very helpful and could not give us the name of a travel agency on the premises, so we went back to the ticket office to try again.

Today's ticket office attendant was incredibly helpful. He told us that we should buy our tickets at the next group of windows over. Our number was 297 and they were serving number 230! We were in for a bit of a wait, but we need to get this done, so we went to the cafeteria to find lunch/breakfast. After maybe 30-45 minutes we had our rail tickets in hand. I was able to ask for the tickets in Spanish, and answer the few preliminary questions, but when we finally purchased the tickets, our ticket guy went on and on about something. I didn't know what he wanted but it seemed as if I could not pay by credit card. I started putting everything he might want in front of him, cash, credit card, passports, etc. We were intrigued to see him take both credit card and cash, but we did get tickets in return, so it must have worked out. It turns out that we could pay by credit for the Spanish tickets, but only by cash for the French tickets.

On the way to our next errand (Mark's haircut), we stopped at the Mirado de Colom or a tall pillar in a roundabout on the coast dedicated to Columbus. A tiny elevator inside that held about 3 people took us to the top. I was actually quite amazed to find out there was a view at the top since it looked no bigger than the Egyptian obelisks we've seen in France and Italy that were solid. The lighting at this time off day was not optimal for seeing the statue of Columbus at the top, but he was up there.

The tourist desk helpers here were baffled when we asked them where Mark could get a haircut. We won asking a question they'd never gotten before. At first they thought we might be asking for a hat, but a little "snip, snip" on my part got them on Google looking for a spot. They pulled in a 3rd person that used to live in the area and we had a destination to head towards. Even better it was right near our meeting spot for our 4pm Picasso tour.

Mark was happy with his Italian cut, and he's now happy with his Spanish cut as well. We realized we didn't get a photo of the cut, so you'll just have to imagine him with shorter hair. And now, with Mark's head feeling lighter than air, we met our walking tour at Plaza Catalunya.

Barcelona Walking Tours took us on a 2 hour tour through the old part of Barcelona to point out all the buildings that were important to Picasso's career, and then through the Picasso Museum here in town. The museum mostly has works from his early career and childhood as the biggest donation to the museum were all the paintings in his Barcelona home that his dad had saved. He painted on average 2 paintings a day from age 10 until age 93. It is really quite amazing. His father, also a painter and then an art teacher, felt from the time that Picasso was 9 that he would be a world-famous painter and worked hard to give him every opportunity possible to reach that goal. On the walking tour we saw several of the art galleries were Picasso had exhibits at age 16 and where several of his apartments were. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and we had a good experience on the tour.

At this point it was only 6pm and our dinner reservations were not until 9:15pm. So, we improvised. First we headed to the Museu de la Xocolata, or Chocolate Museum. Mmmmmm, Xocolata is their slogan. I tend to agree. Amazingly the museum had huge sculptures made of chocolate. I wouldn't believe that chocolate sculptures would last for very long, but they must have done something to keep them. We skipped the actual museum part since they were closing soon and instead first watched the end of a chocolate sculpture class. They made airplanes, trucks, and other figures out of chocolate and left them out. I was able to take photos through the glass and one student saw me taking photos and brought over more chocolate statues for me to take photos of. =)

We hung out in the chocolate shop to eat our candy bars and smell the free smells until they kicked us out at closing time. Now we can say that we closed down a chocolate shop. Mmmmm, chocolate.

Time to wander and kill time. The direction we picked to walk turned out to be a good one for window shopping. Also, Mark found another Dr. Pepper to enjoy as we walked. We were highly amused at an advertised Inca shop that seemed to be full of stereotypical Native American items. The streets were crowded at this hour by both tourists and locals. The weather was down in the low 50s, so there was a chill in the air, but while moving around we stayed warm. Store hours are very interesting around here. In the afternoon shops and stores are closed for the siesta/lunch hour from about 1:30-4 and now later in the evening everything was open for business. Some places decide to close whenever they want to, others pick a day to be closed, and some places are open all the time.

Eventually we took the metro and wandered up Montjuic hill towards Olympic Village where our flamenco restaurant was located. Our reservations provided us free entry into the Olympic Village, or Poble Espanyol de Barcelona. It was originally built in the early 1900s for a World's Exhibition and was kept and then later used as Olympic Village for the 1992 Olympics. One of the museums we would have visited if we had more time was the Olympic Museum here. At this time of night the Poble Espanyol was deserted. We felt alone in the world until a huge group of young travelers gathered and hung out near us for a while.

Entry to our restaurant was not until 9:15, but at 9 I was cold and ready to go inside. Luckily there was a little heated bar area to the side where we could wait. We had pre-ordered the tapas menu and had about 6 dishes of various tapas come to our table. There was a plate of Italian sausages, bread, cubes of very hard cheese, then some chilies that tasted very much like hatch chillies but were much much smaller, some battered and fried fish of some sort, and some french fries. With the crema de Catalonia (much like creme brulee) for dessert this was plenty of food. We were on the second level of Tablao de Carmen and had a great view of the flamenco show downstairs. Several singers, a guitar player, and several dancers entertained us for the evening. Overall, this was an excellent way to round out and end our vacation.

We walked home and arrived just before the doors closed at midnight. Tonight we pack and tomorrow we take about 3 trains back to Marseille. Happy Vacation indeed!

Arriving home

Day 23 (February 24, 2011)

Itinerary:  Joanna has a 6:40am flight too Amsterdam, then a 10:40am flight to Houston arriving at 2pm, CST.  Mark has a 9:00am fliight to Annaba arriving at 10:25am, CET.

We had a very sad morning today when I woke at 5am to say goodbye to Mark.  We have such an incredible time together that it's hard to remember that we were apart for 8 weeks before this.  And now, we shall spend another 8 weeks going our own way.  But we shall be together again in April. 

After traveling with Mark for the past 3 weeks it is now strange going to the airport without him.  But, I must catch my 6:40am flight to Amsterdam where I will connect to a flight to Houston.  The  check in line for luggage was long and I picked the longest line of course out of 3 choices.  I much prefer the airlines that have just one long line and multiple desks rather than the Marseille airport where you have to pick a line for each attendant.  I went through security behind several airport workers who were scanning bags of food through the xray machine.  I didn't even connect the fact that if I was following the food into the terminal, there would be no food for me to buy once inside.  No breakfast before the plane for me. 

We boarded the plane on time, but then had to sit at the gate for about 30 minutes as the pilot informed us that the weather was terrible in Amsterdam with lots of mist and temperatures at 3 degrees C.  So, we sat.  Finally we took off and I slept most of the way just waking up for breakfast.

I thought they were handing out wrapped muffins, but the breakfast was actually an egg and cheese omlet in a little bread sandwich.  This trip is the first time I've flown KLM, and I have to say that other than Singapore Airlines, this airline has some of the best food.  I've been very happy with my KLM experiences.

En-route to Amsterdam the pilot once again informed us that the weather was terrible and we'd have to circle in a holding area for a while.  He listed a bunch of connecting flights that passengers would not make.  According to the pilot, I could still make my connection, but I'd have to run.  While we circled, I saw other planes up in the air circling as well.  This is the first time I really remember looking out the window of a plane and seeing more than one other plane in the sky with us. 

It felt as if we must be very high off the ground as there was a blanket of clouds beneath us, but the pilot told us we were finally landing and the landing gear came out.  The  next second I knew, the plane was on the ground!  I looked outside to see the terrible Amsterdam weather.  We landed in a fog of pea soup.  From my seat in the plane I could just barely make out the ground and I was amazed that we made it to the  runway.  The airport was no where in sight of course.

We touched ground around 9:30 and I was off the plane and in the bus to the airport after 9:40am.  My boarding time was 9:40 and my flight was at 10:40.  The Amsterdam airport is very large and I still had to go through passport control! 

Our bus finally arrived at the gate and we all burst out running to the computers where I could see that my Houston flight was boarding and a 20 minute walk away.  It's neat here because the computer screens give information on how long the walk is to each flight listed.  I love data!

I ran and ran and found a horde of people trying to push through passport control.  I was relieved to see them open another line.  My flight was still listed as boarding.  Now it's after 10am and I'm still 17 minutes from my gate.  And the line is creeping by.  I couldn't believe that my Houston flight was going to take off on time in this fog. 

I stood hopping from foot to foot as passport control asked me about my trip to Spain and if I had fun.  Then I ran to gate E24.  Security check was right at the gate.  Once through security people were just starting to get on board.   Phew, I made it!  I can only imagine that "boarding" meant going through the security right before the gate as it's been blinking "boarding" ever since my first flight landed.

Boarding the aircraft was very efficient.  There was a tarmac going to the back of the plane and one towards the front.  I have a whole row of 4 seats in the middle of the plane to myself.  I like to sit in the back of the plane as there is a higher probablility of getting a row to myself.  Goal achieved.

At this point we just sat here on the tarmac waiting for the plane to be fueled.  Then the pilot came on the air and mentioned that due to the fog, we'd be sitting here at least another 45 minutes.  So why did we board the plane?  I could be sitting in the terminal using the free wifi the Amsterdam airport provides.  I don't think we took off until after 11:30.  The flight attendants were very nice while we sat here.  We got drinks and snacks at least. 

The flight went smoothly after take off.  I didn't get as much sleep as I would have hoped, but I'll sleep tonight.  The next week will be pretty busy for me as I catch back up with regular life.  Thanks for reading my blog/journal.  I keep the journal mainly for myself to keep track of what we  do and where we've been, but it's nice to share it with others.

I've made it to the Houston airport and soon I'll be home.  Mark says he made it home fine as well.

Until the next vacation....signing off.

Umbrella Tour

Day 20 (February 21, 2011)

Itinerary: 9am Gaudi Tour including Park Guell and Temple de La Sagrada Familia, buffet lunch, Museu Musica, siesta in hotel room, dinner at Xaica Petit

I'm not sure what made us think that booking a 9am Gaudi tour after a late futbol game last night was a good idea. We had to be up earlier than we wanted to meet our group at Plaza Catalunya for our Gaudi tour. After seeing so many, what we called "umbrella tours" in Italy, we are finally on one. Our tour guide had a bright orange umbrella which she held up so we could find her. We had a whole coach bus for the tour, but only about 10 of us were on the tour, so it felt more private.

The bus drove us along Carrer Gran de Gracia, one of the more expensive streets in Barcelona, and also one of the longest. We passed by two Gaudi apartment buildings. Casa Batllo was our first real introduction to the architecture of Gaudi and we were impressed at his style. Gaudi uses nature as his inspiration for architecture and therefore his buildings do not have many straight lines. Instead the buildings look as if they've grown out of the ground and sprouted windows and doors. Pillars are not always vertical and very often look like branches or trees. We moved on to Casa Mila (La Pedrera) where we learned that Gaudi was not appreciated in his time. His architecture style was considered to different and weird until probably the 1990s when people started to flock to see his buildings.

I fell in love with Gaudi's work when we stopped at Park Guell. Here was a little mountian than Guell purchased with the intent of selling hundreds of plots. He commissioned Gaudi as the architect for his home and the park areas. Well, no one was interested in moving this far from the city, nor were they interested in living near Gaudi's work, so only 3 plots were sold. Guell lived in one, Gaudi in another, and Guell's lawyer in one more. The park itself is very interesting. The roads were built so that the walkway was beneath the elevated road for carriages. With the Gaudi architecture, the park looked more like a fairy land almost. Certainly the walkways seemed to grow out of the ground like trees. Gaudi was considered ahead of his time because he used somewhat environmental concepts when building the park. Most of the stone was taken from that very mountain. Also, large areas would collect rain and store the water inside of pillars and tanks underground. Gaudi used a lot of mosaics in his work as well. Many of the materials in the mosaics were recycled broken bottles or dishes and glassware.

The main entrace to the park held two houses that looked like they belonged to the story Hansel and Gretel. The lighting was all wrong for my photos, but I did pick up a postcard that depicted the houses in the right light.

Our last stop was at the Temple de La Sagrada Familia. Honestly, Mark and I hadn't even put this tourist stop on our radar when we looked at things to do in Barcelona, but here we were and we were impressed. Firstly, and probably most impressive is that the church is still under construction. Work started in the 1880s and most likely will not be completed until 2026. Today all the money going towards the construction is from donations and ticket sales, so the finish date adjusts according to visitor projections. If you are ever in Barcelona, I would recommend visiting this monument to Gaudi. Gaudi was the second architect and main architect on the project. He worked on it from the 1880s until 1926 when he was killed in a tram accident. (We found it ironic that at this point in his life he decided to dislike and never use public transportation and that's what killed him.)

The main entrance isn't even built yet and the interior was just finished in November of 2010. The Pope came and the scaffolding inside was taken down. Today we were in awe. We entered through the side entrance which depicted the birth of Jesus through it's very ornate entry. On the opposite side was an entrance depicting the story of the death of Jesus. The distinct differences in not only birth versus death, but also sculpture and artistic styles on either side were dramatic and hard to describe.

Inside the church, the pillars seemed to be modeled after trees and rose 45 meters high. When the structure is completed, the highest point inside will be 75 meters tall, the tallest interior. Since the interior was essentially just completed, it looked more modern and new. The stained glass especially looked very new and very different from the Italian churches we've been to where most buildings have been restored. Really the only way to describe it is to tell you to come visit. Photos will never show the grandeur of the place.

Our tour essentially ended here and afterwards we ascended up the elevator into one of the 8 towers. There will be 18 towers when the church is finished, but only 8 stand now. From the top we had an incredible view of Barcelona, the tops of the Sangrada Familia and it's fruit sculptures, as well as the construction work in progress. Certainly we paid almost equal attention to all 3 views, but probably a little more attention to the construction than a normal visitor. The fruit bunches at the top here are certainly very different from any Italian churches we've been to. In order to descend, there was a series of spiral staircases. In fact, I would call it a maze of staircases since many times we had options to either continue down the stairs or to cross to a new tower and continue down those stairs. We may not have taken the only route down, but just going down was an adventure in and of itself. There were lots of very tiny and narrow viewpoints along the way.

We found a very decent buffet place for lunch outside where we could get a salad and several servings of vegetables. It always seems to be harder to keep up with our vegetable intake while on vacation. Then, we headed off in the direction of the Museu Musica, or Music Museum. This museum is not very popular, or at least not on a day like today in the off-season. We felt as if we had the whole museum to ourselves. The layout was done very well. Glass cases from floor to ceiling created walls for many rooms in which the music of the instruments on display were playing. This allowed us to listen to many different pieces of music throughout our visit. There were several hundred instruments on display showing a general history of evolution of the instruments used for music. The names were only listed in Spanish, so some of the more obscure instruments are still unknown to us. It was indeed very interesting to see so many types of instruments, however.

The last exhibit in the museum was supposed to be a room full of instruments for us to try. However, the room was mostly empty. We did each get to play the harp, an electric guitar, and a very small and manual operated organ. It was still fun. Throughout the exhibits we were trying to guess what instruments might be in the last room since we've both played a variety already.

At this point it was early evening and being Monday, many other museums in the area were closed or closing, so we went back to the hotel for a little siesta before dinner. During our break we did some research and found both a place to eat tonight and a flamenco dinner show for tomorrow night.

Tonight we headed towards Xaica Petite where we had a long almost 2 hour dinner. I had their pollo asado after a very different shrimp cocktail starter than I've ever had before. Mark ate a steak after an avocado salad starter. We both enjoyed dessert as well as part of the menu.

Tomorrow is our last day in Barcelona and we'll see how much we are able to see.

Park Guell

Hansel and Gretal house in Park Guell

Example of saucers used in mosaics in Park Guell

Inside Sangrada Familia

Side of Sangrada Familia

Goooooooooooooooool

Day 19 (February 20, 2011)

Itinerary: Mercat Boqueria, lunch on La Rambla, purchase tickets for Picasso tour and Gaudi tour, unable to get tickets at Palau de la Musica Catalana, DHUB, find a Dr. Pepper, prepare for futbol game, FC Barcelona futbol match

There is a lot to do in Barcelona! The bed was strewn with tourist brochures and information this morning while we made lists and figured out what we most wanted to see and do and what days and hours these places were open. Not everything is open on Sunday, many places are closed on Mondays, and Tuesdays, most, but not all places are open. The trick was to see if we could fill Sunday and Monday with museums and activities so Tuesday was not jam-packed with everything. Luckily, it didn't take too long to come up with a decent plan of action.

The first place we visited was the Mercat Boqueria, which was actually closed now, but the street, La Rambla was full of markets as well. Most markets here were selling flowers and plants including some adorable little cacti. We realized we weren't interested in spending too much time here, so we grabbed a quick lunch and headed up to the Plaza Catalunya to purchase tickets to various tours over the next couple days. We grabbed a Gaudi tour for tomorrow and a Picasso tour for Tuesday.

We struck out on our trip to Palau de la Musica Catalana. No more tickets were available for today and tomorrow didn't look good either. In fact, there was only one ticket for a noon tour and then one ticket for the 2pm tour. So, we'll skip this attraction for this trip. Photos in the gift shop were enough to satisfy us for the time being.

Next stop on our list was the DHUB or design museum. It was much harder to find that I would have hoped as it was buried around several corners of very small streets. Our tourist map was not that detailed and we walked up and down the street several times looking for the right turn. Luckily, we stumbled across it with plenty of time for a visit.

There were 3 exhibitions today. One was a very interesting exhibition on 3D printing techniques. It's actually really hard to describe except to say with a computer program you can draw a 3D shape and then it will be printed with a special material at whatever size you want. We saw some intriguing forms that had been printed on a 3D printer. There are many different kinds of 3D printing. One video told us of research going into 3D tissue printing so one day doctors can simply print someone a new organ. Wow, now that's more advanced than I can comprehend. =) Technology is amazing. Another exhibition took us through some 3D gemotrical shapes and sculptures from several design contests of college-aged kids. And the last exhibition was not very memorable, because now I can't even think of what it was. In any case, we enjoyed our time at DHUB.

On the way back to our hotel room, we saw someone walking down the street holding a can of Dr. Pepper! I had been planning to bring Mark a bottle of Dr. Pepper, but in the end I was unable to fit it in the luggage. So, now we went in search of a shop that carried Mark's favorite soda, usually only available in the US and Texas. We found one! A little shop had cans of Dr. Pepper bottled in the UK. Mark and I both agreed that it tasted just like the US Dr. Pepper.

Both Mark and I were very excited about our planned evening watching FC Barcelona futbol. We headed out towards the stadium with the intent of finding dinner along the way. Well, for some reason we couldn't find any open places to eat. Finally we grabbed some quick sandiches. I guess the Barcelona crowd doesn't eat around the stadium.

The stadium and the game were amazing! First off, in order to purchase the tickets online, we had to order through a 3rd party vendor several days ago on La Palma island. The tickets were delivered to our hotel room for us to pick up. At the time of purchase, the game was nearly sold out and there were no 2 seats next to each other. Mark and I each had a single ticket a few rows away from each other. The place was packed! Official attendance was over 83,300 people at the game and boy did it sound like it. At the start of the gave, ever single fan stood up and sang their team song. There was a big cheering section behind our team's goal that stood the entire game and lead the cheers. One guy even had a bass drum. Many fans had those plastic horn vuvuzelas as well. Mark and I are used to a more apethetic Rice crowd at sporting events. Here, there was not one apathetic person in the place. The fans were yelling, cheering, singing, and the resulting atmosphere was absolutely amazing. I didn't see an empty seat in the house. When FC Barcelona scored their first Gooooooooollllllll, everyone went wild.

Barca, as they are known, won the game and we left knowing many of the Barca cheers. Some cheers are very similar world-wide apparently, with the same starting beat and just different chants. This was a fun night to remember.

Leaving the stands was a spectacle as well. First, we stayed high looking down below as hordes of thousands of people streamed out of the stadium. This was the definition of a sea of people for sure. When we joined the thousands, we found that the people had the right of way here and the 6-lane street was all people walking as the sidewalks were too full to contain all of us. We felt like we were in a march of some sort as we stormed through the streets towards the metro. The metro of course had a line a block long just to go down to the station, so we opted to walk back to our hotel as it wasn't all that far away anyway.

We will remember this night for a long time. Mark is already making plans to find a soccer game up in the UK for us to attend as well.

Hot Chocolate and churros

Mark in his FC Barcelona jersey

Full stadium at the futbol game

Planes, Trains, and Buses

Day 18 (February 19, 2011)

Itinerary: Public Transportation to Barcelona, find dinner in train station

We have reached that point in our 3 week vacation where we can't believe that we still have more vacation time. We are completely spoiled by Mark's rotation schedule now.

Today is a travel day. Bus, plane, and train to get to our hotel in Barcelona. It was a cloudy morning and one of the first cloudy mornings we've seen on the islands. Breakfast was a similar buffet style to yesterday and we had time to spare before our big bus adventure. Here we are on the south side of Tenerife, the most popular area of the islands and we couldn't find a non-stop flight to Barcelona leaving from the south airport.

So, we trekked up to the bus station to spend about 2 hours taking the bus to the north airport. Getting on the bus turned into an adventure. The bus was already full when it pulled up, and not everyone in the line of people at the bus stop was getting on the bus. In front of me, about 4 people got off the bus, but I hammered on and argued with the bus driver to let us stay on. We had a flight to catch after all. =) I didn't really know what he was saying to me, but he took my money and with Mark sitting on the entry steps to the bus and me crammed next to the driver, we took off.

Mark and I both agreed that if we had been in Peru, the bus would have been half as small and held double the people. The bus driver turned away the folks at the next 2 bus stops and eventually we reached the first main stop, the south airport where many people got off. We were able to scoot back to about the halfway point in the bus where we spend the remainder of the 1.5 hour ride standing in the aisle trying not to elbow anyone in the face.

After being crammed in the bus, I expected to have more stories to tell about the ride, but it was actually pretty dull. We all piled out at the Santa Cruz bus station and end of the line to transfer to the bus that would take us to the north airport. The bus pulled up and the driver got out to take his smoke break. Unfortunately, he didn't come back by the time the bus was supposed to leave. It was a good thing we built in time for long bus transfers because we left about 20 minutes late by the time the driver finally came back.

Everything turned out fine since our flight was delayed about 30 minutes anyway. The north airport to Tenerife is small-medium sized so there was no security line. Oh, and no check in line either. We breezed to our gate and waited to hop on the flight.

We are sitting on the plane near a single mom with 2 kids. She has a baby that must only be a month old and a 2-3 year old active little girl as well. We played the game of how many flight attendants does it take to help out when Mom needed to use the bathroom. One flight attendant was handed the baby while she went in. The kid stayed in her seat for about 4 seconds before she hopped out to look for Mom. Just then we hit a bunch of turbulence and the flight attendants tried to get everyone to their seats and seat-belted in. 3 flight attendants tried to coerce the little girl to get back in her seat, while the other stood by with the baby. These Spanair attendants do seem more helpful over all than some US ones I've seen.

Back in Barcelona, we were here early enough to take our time and check out the tourist information stations of maps and ideas for our visit. At this point, we really had no idea what there was to do in the area, so we will be spontaneous while we are here. All we know so far is that we have tickets to Sunday night's futbol match starring the very popular FC Barcelona team.

We came back to the same Barcelo Sants hotel located on top of the main train station, Barcelona Sants. We were happy with our room last time and are equally happy this time around. The hotel is very new and is modeled after rooms that you might have on a space craft. Our room was called the orbital room in which several fake bubble windows depicted what might be outside our space craft and gaves us the atmospheric compositions. The shower and bathroom were both bright white with sliding doors and more like compartments on a submarine or spacecraft as well. The furniture was all very modern and the hallways were dark with colored lights. Probably the best part was the prox card hotel room key that we only had to touch to our door in order to unlock it. No messing around with inserting a credit card-like hotel room key in a slot and waiting for the green light before removing it.

Tonight we'll get some sleep and tomorrow we'll figure out what we are doing for the next several days.

Two short finned pilot whales from yesterday

Sunset last night in Los Cristianos

Elevator lobby of our hotel in the sky

Pilot Whales

Day 17 (February 18, 2011)

Itinerary: Breakfast in the hotel, get caught up on journal entries, whale watching cruise, continue to catch up on journal entries, walk along the shore for sunset and find dinner

Today is our last full day in the Canary Islands. Tomorrow we are off to Barcelona for a few days, then to Marseille for a day before I go back to the US and Mark goes back to Algeria. We plan on catching a soccer game in Barcelona while we are there and I hear their team is one of the most popular teams in the world.

Breakfast in the hotel similar to how a cruise ship breakfast must be like. There was a huge buffet and it felt like hordes of people were busy grabbing as much food as possible. We are by far the youngest guests at this hotel by at least 30 years. We both brought our wifi-enabled devices down to breakfast to use the free wifi available only on the first floor.

The morning was rather lazy. We packed up the computer and walked along the shore line to find a sunny bench to sit on. The people watching here is excellent, but I was most concerned with getting caught up with my journal. At this point I hadn't typed up an entry since Feb. 14th and it was hard to remember what all we did way back then.

The hotel was very helpful and booked us a 1pm whale watching cruise out of the port a short walk away, so we grabbed some ice cream to snack on as we waited for our cruise. I had probably the best mango ice cream I've ever had. Mmmm, yummy.

The 2 hour cruise was just long enough. Apparently the waters between Tenerife and La Gomera (only separated by 25 nautical miles) are home to the short finned pilot whales year round. These pilot whales are small and can reach up to 6 meters in length. We found quite a few and very quickly. They sat on the surface and watched us while we watched them. From the parts we could see, they almost looked like large, black, dolphins. The boat's two catamarans were glass-lined to make viewing under the ocean easy. We could go downstairs and sit to watch the whales under the surface of the water when they were next to the boat. I haven't seen this model of glass-bottomed boat before.

When we got tired of the pilot whales, we motored off in search of dolphins and found some near some sea bass farms located off several cliffs. The dolphins were very playful and even did a few leaps in the air to show off.

Our boat traveled fairly slowly since we didn't have to go very far off shore to find the mammals, so we had a very pleasant and calm ride. The sun was out and with the breeze the weather was about perfect.

After lunch on the boardwalk, we took our afternoon siesta on our porch back at the hotel in the sun. Mark and I both draped towels over our face to keep the sun out and we looked rather silly. But it made for a more pleasant napping experience out in the sun.

After a while, it was time to be productive and I finally caught up on the journal entries. Tonight we'll go downstairs and post them. Our sunset walk was crowded with people. The kids were out digging holes in the sand, several people were zooming around on comfort bikes, and everyone else was out walking. We went down to the water's edge and found that the beach was completely clear of shells and seaweed and jellyfish. There was only sand and water. The waves were making tiny rivelets in the sand as the tide went out creating interesting patterns and the sunset was casting colorful reflections in the water and the wet sand. We just stood and watched the waves for a bit.

We found a peaceful location for dinner and then realized that just next door was a Mexican food place with fajitas and everything. Maybe we'll find a spot in Barcelona. On our walk back to the hotel I remembered several things I meant to blog about last night.

Several beach-side entrepreneurs were making sand sculptures of mermaids, sharks, and dragons that looked pretty neat. The dragon even had a candle placed in it's mouth to breathe fire. We also found our first sand castle ghost. There was a sand castle made of cardboard with a man covered in a white sheet inside. He said, "OooooooOOOO, I am the ghost of Canaria." His ghost-like sounds sounded more like a wolf's howl than a ghost at some points, but we were amused to the point of laughter.

Tomorrow is a travel day as we take the bus to the North Tenerife airport and then fly back to Barcelona. We are staying in that same "hotel in the sky" on top of the train station we were in before.

I'm posting quickly again, so no photos. They are still on the memory card.

One and a half days

Day 16 (February 17, 2011)

Itinerary: Early morning ferry from Santa Cruz de La Palma to Los Cristianos on Tenerife, Check into H10 Hotel, spend the day at Siam Park (a water park), dinner on the beach

Today felt more like 1.5 days. The ferry was about an hour away and we needed to be there 30 minutes early. So that meant waking up at 3:30, leaving at 4:15, and arriving at 5:15 for our 5:45am ferry ride back to Tenerife. We made it just fine. We saw about 5 cars before we hit Santa Cruz on our early morning mountain drive which meant I could use my brights the whole way. Dropping off the rental car was super easy as there was a key drop next to the ferry ticket office. The most notable part of this trip was the squeaky metal sounds the ferry was admitting when we arrived. It sounded a little like a loud and distressed whale. We finally figured out that the sound came from the metal platform from ferry to shore that the cars would drive over to enter. But we had fun standing around saying: "OoOOoooOOooo, Eerrrrrrr, Ahhhrrrrhhhhooooo."

Next thing we knew, we were at the Los Crisitianos harbor. We slept the whole way here and wow there were tons of people here. We were coming from a small, non-tourist island to a larger very touristy part of Tenerife. It was like a country boy entering the big city for the first time. All the shop owners along the shoreline were brushing down their entries and getting ready for the day. The breakfast places were opening their awnings and the early morning joggers were out for a run on our peaceful walk to the hotel.

We are staying in the H10 Hotel of Los Cristianos, an easy walk from the port, for 2 nights. Of course we arrived when all the guests were both checking out and trying to get organized for their tours for the day. The desk was hopping and when we finally were able to talk to someone we found out that somehow our booking had been made for 2/19 instead of 2/17. I really don't know what happened, but they were able to accommodate us with an ocean view room anyway. The room wouldn't be ready for a few hours still, so we dumped the luggage in the storage room at the hotel and headed off for Siam Park.

Back when we were at Loro Parque, el "must" de Canarias, we pre-purchased tickets to Siam Park, the happening water park on Tenerife. Now we could hop the free bus to the park. The weather was pretty much perfect for a water park day. It was warm and sunny out. The park let us rent both towels and lockers and we were all set.

The park personnel had to give instructions to everyone in multiple languages. For the most part they just used English and everyone seemed to understand. All the rides were thrilling. One of the more unique set ups was a tube ride that dropped us into what can only be described as a large toilet bowl that we went around and around before we were flushed out. We found out that all the cheesy pictures in the brochures were actual photos. The main photo was a huge dragon on top of a large funnel ride and indeed the dragon was there.

The tallest ride of the park was the most intense ride. First you had to climb a few hundred steps to get to the top. At the top, the lifeguard held up the instruction sign in 3 languages and went over the rules to cross your legs, cross your arms, and keep you head back. They were all about keeping your head back. They would not let you go down until your head was back and the poor boy in front of us kept lifting up his head during prep. The lifeguard kept pushing his head back down. He made sure our chins were lifted and our arms were crossed more than usual and then he pushed us down the nearly vertical drop. Whooooshhh! All of a sudden I was at the bottom deep in a pool of water and all I could think was, "is the ride over and am I allowed to move yet?" Haha. I couldn't open my eyes at all, so I missed the part where we were shot through a water tube inside a shark pond. The brochures had the photos of people riding tubes through the shark pond, and I didn't think it really existed, but it did.

We were surprised to find that our lunch options were not limited to hamburgers and hot dogs. In fact, there was quite a lunch counter with decent food. After lunch, we grabbed some lounge chairs and took our afternoon siesta on the shore of the wave pool. The sun started disappearing behind the clouds at this point, coming down from the mountains, but we still managed to get our February tan on.

We woke with enough time for a couple more hours of thrilling fun before it was time to change and head back to the hotel. We would both recommend Siam Park to someone visiting the area.

Our room was ready when we got back to the hotel, so we were able to decompress before dinner. The porch outside our room was very large, maybe 10' x10'. We had lounge chairs, a table, regular chairs, and even an umbrella, all with a view of the ocean.

We are located at the start of the shoreline walk around two bays that we took to a dinner spot. We decided to try out the fish and seafood paella which was about as we expected. We got shrimp, clams, and citrus fruit surrounding a plate of rice-seafood mix similar to a jambalaya. All the shrimp I've ordered around here come full with heads and tails.

After dinner we crashed back in the hotel room and slept for about 10 hours. Tomorrow we'll see about some whale watching cruises.

For the sake of getting the posts out quickly, no photos today.

Beachy

Day 15 (February 16, 2011)

Itinerary: Try to get a whale watching cruise from Tazacorte, beach day in Tazacorte, relax in the room playing Wii, watch the sunset, dinner of corn crepes, early to bed

Another beautiful island day! It is our last day on La Palma, and in this marvelous apartment we have. We made another yummy breakfast and then drove down to the coastal town of Tazacorte. The plan today is to take it easy and stay close to home so we can go to bed early to catch our early morning ferry tomorrow.

We started out at the tourist information center in Tazacorte, but they were not much help at figuring out what time the companies would go out for whale watching. Language was a bit of a barrier since I couldn't say whale watching in spanish. So, we decided to walk down to the port as it didn't look very far away on the map and we had a good parking spot. Once we were down the path a bit, we realized that it must be a farther walk because we weren't even down to sea level yet. We were slightly amused that our path along the road was marked as a hiking trail, but we were able to find the port easily.

We found the port under construction and the port town to be fairly empty. Unfortunately, but the time we wandered to the 2 companies that offered whale watching, there were no more for the day. One had already left and the other was supposed to have already left, but apparently had no clients to take out. Instead we walked along the port to a nice place to sit and watch the waves crash on the rocks. Here we could almost pretend we were at Los Gigantes because the cliffs extended maybe a couple hundred meters in the air.

A pigeon came to visit us, and we properly called it a rock dove per a sign in one of the park visitor's center labeling pigeons as rock doves. We find this amusing.

Our stroll from the port over to the beach was sunny and peaceful. As I mentioned before, it was a beautiful island day and we never saw any dark clouds all day. We've really only had one bad weather day all vacation. We are very happy with our warm island weather here on the Canary Islands.

We found lots of crabs walking out along a pier and some sleepy seagulls with no interest in the crabs. The black volcanic beach had a splattering mix of retired beach-goers and young families playing in the sun. We found a spot at a restaurant to people-watch and eat some lunch. We were slightly disappointed to find out that once again, a tortilla espanola is actually an omelette with no tortillas in it. We plan to hit up a grocery store before Mark goes back to Algeria, though and find some tortillas for him to take back.

There were several amusing people along the beach. One was a hitchhiker with a cardboard thumb and a Tazacorte sign hanging off his backpack. There was a cute little dog wandering around with a collar, but no owners begging food and attention from people with a tail wag. We also saw many pink northern Europeans in various stages of sunburn.

At some point in the afternoon, we strolled back to our car watching the lizards on the path duck away as we came near and drove back to the apartment. We played more of Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii all afternoon until the sunset colors streamed in the windows and we went out to watch the nearly full moon rise in the east as the sun set in the west.

This was a perfect way to spend our last day here. We both really like La Palma with it's lack of tourists and abundance of hiking opportunities.

We ate dinner in town at that corn crepe place we ate at the first night we were here and then packed up and went to bed. Tomorrow we have to wake up at 3:30am to catch our ferry back to Tenerife.

Spring in February

Day 14 (February 15, 2011)

Itinerary: Drive along the western coast of La Palma, visit Roques de los Muchachos and Observatory, Drive along north coast of La Palma, hike in Los Tiles, dinner in Santa Cruz

Before I get started on our day, here are a few stories I've been meaning to mention.
1. The orange trees outside our apartment are awesome. We are drinking fresh squeezed orange juice from freshly picked oranges every morning.
2. Today we followed a truck with a dog in back who hysterically could not decide which side of the truck had the best smells. He kept going back and forth faster than you can even think of pacing to smell each side.
3. This is the first vacation destination that we've been mistaken for Brits before Americans/Canadians. We are the first Americans to stay at our apartment even.
4. We are amazed to see an Ikea here on the small island of La Palma!

And now on with today's stories. We had a wonderful breakfast this morning on our porch after we woke up to the most perfect island weather. Sunny, clear skies and a very clear horizon line along the distant ocean.

The drive along the west coast of La Palma was beautiful and felt like spring. The road was lined with greenery and flowers of all colors. I can't believe we left this drive for the end of our visit. The coast is mostly lined with hundreds of banana farms. We drove past several to get to the Mirador del Time where we could look out for miles. I'm pretty sure we saw the island of El Hierro today as well. The ocean was such a deep blue compared to the sky and there was absolutely no haze in the distance.

The mountain roads along the coast winded along through the flowers until we came to the turn off for Roques de los Muchachos. About 13 observatories are posted up on the mountains here where the weather is almost always clear. Many countries have access to this prime location. The switchbacks up the mountain were full of steep, tight turns that were almost too tight for the turning radius of our SUV. Luckily, traffic was light and we powered up the mountain.

Once again we found ourselves high above the cloud line with that rolling blanket of clouds beneath us. The whole islands was covered in clouds, but we could see El Teide on Tenerife clearly. The hike out to the viewpoint was short and then we found another view point past that one with a fairly short hike as well. Snow covered the area, though for the most part the walkways were clear. I don't know the last time it snowed up here, but it must have been a while. It was cool and very windy out.

Back at the car, we decided to eat lunch in the back of the SUV with the seats folded down. We faced out the tailgate and it was like we had our own private wind cave. After lunch and some photos, we headed back down the mountain to continue on our journey.

The rest of the drive along the west coast was still beautiful with flowers, landscape, and ocean to look at. We tried to find a picturesque spot described in our tour book outside Bartlovento on the north side of the island, but we didn't see it. Many of the roads were under construction and I can only guess that January/February is the best time for road construction in the off months. The drive to Los Tiles took quite a while slowing down for all the mountain curves, oncoming traffic, and construction zones. By the time we arrived it was already 5pm and we managed to dash inside the visitors center before they closed.

There was a short hike up to a mirador that turned into a short climb up a mountain. The entire hike was full of steep stairs and ramps, but we made it to the top in about 40 minutes. Phew. After catching our breath, we could see that this must be a popular spot. There was a full blown picnic area with at least 6 picnic benches under a roof and several more outside. We sat and watched the sun drop below the mountain while 3 little birds played a game to see who could come closest to us. I'm sure they thought we had food. I had one come nearly within arms reach.

Finally, the sun dipped below the mountain top and we headed back down, much faster this time. The whole area here in Los Tiles is a very lush rainforest type of area and very different from our other hikes on the islands.

From here we completed our drive around the islands and headed to Santa Cruz de La Palma where our ferry dropped us off a few days ago. This is a more happening town, so we were able to walk along the coast and find a good spot to eat. I had some delicious steak while Mark ate the catch of the day. We didn't figure out what fish it was in English, but it was red in color and tasted good. The waiter even walked Mark over to the case holding the freshly caught fish to pick his out.

In the past couple days, now we have pretty much driven a full loop around the island. There is only one small section on the southeast coast that we did not drive to. We decided to take the drive back to Los Llanos that cut through the middle of the island and through the mountain. We could get a good time of how long it took to get from the port to our apartment driving at night for the morning our ferry leaves.

We had a beautiful island day today. I could get used to this.

The prettiest volcano in the Canary Islands

Day 13 (February 14, 2011)

Itinerary: Errands in the morning, pizza for lunch in Los Llanos, visit Fuencaliente and the southern tip of the island, walk around Volcano San Antonio, watch the sunset on the salt flats, leftover pizza for dinner

Happy Valentine's Day. I thought I'd make french toast for breakfast this morning, but once my bread was already soaking in egg, I realized I had no butter for the pan. I didn't have any syrup or jam for flavoring either, so we ended up with egg-flavored bread for breakfast. Haha, oh well.

This morning we drove into town to run some errands. It was time to hit up the grocery store again, hit up an internet cafe for faster service to buy our Barcelona soccer tickets, and various other things. We found a nice little cafe in a plaza to have pizza for lunch as well. The pizza was large enough to take home leftovers for dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow.

Now that the errands were out of the way, we chose to drive to the southern portion of the islands. A line of several volcanoes runs from the center of the caldera and center of the islands down to the southern tip of the islands. If we were to hike this path, it would be the 19km Ruta de los volcanos. We didn't hike. But we did find ourselves in Fuencaliente, an area named for several hot springs. We found the visitors center for Volcan San Antonio and learned that La Palma has the newest volcanoes of all the Canary Islands. In fact, several of the ones down here in the south last erupted in the 60s and 70s. No one was hurt, but the islands did grow a little.

We were one of the few visitors here and the staff on duty showed us their introductory film in English. It was definitely a very cheesy film. It was fun to watch like watching a bad movie and commenting along with it. Luckily we were alone.

Back out in the visitors center, we found some interesting maps that showed the path of lava flows from many different eruptions from many different volcanoes in the area. We learned that the volcano right outside, Volcan San Antonio, was the prettiest example of a cylindrical volcano....at least in the Canary Islands. The diameter was only around 300 meters and it was indeed very volcano-shaped. We took the walk around a portion of the rim from which we could see down into the cone of the volcano were some trees were now growing, out over the ocean, and down to the very southern tip of the islands where there is a little farm of salt water pools too collect the salt.

Outside we also found about 8 or so camels sitting with saddles to be ridden. The saddles went over the camel's hump with a seat on either side of the hump so 2 people could ride one camel. Interesting. This looked very much like a tourist attraction, so we skipped it, but later we found a map that the camels do have their own little path to a different part of the area. Only camels are allowed on this path and no hikers. It was called Ruta de los camellos. Amusing, indeed.

With sunset only about an hour away, we decided to drive down to the coastal town of Las Indies named mostly due to all the Europeans and Americans who used to come to this spot to soak in the hot springs. The hot springs supposedly had magical powers that could cure anything and even lepers would come looking for a cure.

The town wasn't much to stop and see, so we drove along the coast looking for a good spot to park for the sunset. Instead we found ourselves buried in tall banana plantations. All were fenced in cinder block and some were completely covered in a netting of sorts over very large areas. We had seen these rectangular blocks of white netting from the views at the top of the mountain and weren't sure what they were. I guess the netting is to keep the birds out? We had no view of the coast in the maze of banana trees and had to drive a little while to find the coast.

We found a little spot to park, but sunset was still probably 30 minutes away. So we kept driving to see where we'd end up. Well, just a little further down the road we found the salt pools and the lighthouse on the very southern tip of the islands. There was even a little self-guided walk through the salt pools where we learned how the salt was harvested. It was similar to the salt pans we found in Peru, though these were much less salty as the salt isn't harvested until May when the water could evaporate faster.

Here we found a great spot to watch the sun set behind the waves crashing on the rocks below us. A perfect end to a great day.

Back at "home" in our apartment we heated up our leftover pizza for dinner and played some Wii to round out the day. We are really loving our stay on La Palma and so glad that we were able to find this apartment.

A Walk in the Clouds

Day 12 (February 13, 2011)

Itinerary: Drive to La Cumbrecita parking lot in the center of the island's caldera or Parque Nacional de la Caldera de Taburiente, Hike a loop trail and the trail to/from Pico Benjado

I had a little surprise this morning when I realized I had been looking at the wrong guage on our SUV to see how full the gas tank was. We were pretty much empty, rather than half full. Rental cars around here do not provide you a car with a full tank. So, the first order of business today was to get some gas for our big diesel SUV.

Once we were finally on our way, we made it to the El Paso visitor's center and entrance to the park after 9am this morning. So, we needed to go inside and request a ticket in order to park at La Cumbrecita parking lot. Apparently it's a very small lot and they keep those waiting for a parking space down at the bottom of the hill and at the visitor's center. When someone comes down off the mountain, the next person is called to go up and take the parking spot. While it can be a little time consuming, it's not such a bad system for busy days. Well, there was no wait for us, so we got our ticket and headed on up.

This is certainly a tiny, tiny parking lot and if more than just the few cars were here, I'd have a tough time parking. Luckily there was room to turn around and back into a spot. First, we set off on an easy loop hike that was only about 2.5miles long. The signs along the way listed the plans in Spanish, so we didn't get too much information. However, there were two good miradores, or view points that looked out into the caldera.

The caldera is in the shape of a U with a mountain in the center of the opening of that U. That mountain is Pico Benjado which will will hike later today. If we were to hike one way along the ridgeline of the U-shaped caldera we'd be hiking for about 18 hours. Our loop hike took us down along the inside of the caldera a little ways. The most impressive views are the steep sides of the caldera and ridge lines that come down from the top of the all the way inside. The trees grow on top of these ridgelines that look only just wide enough to hold one tree's width.

The loop was fairly shady, so a fleece kept us warm. Along the path we found what must have been a very old water well and piping system or maybe some sort of mine. We found a date on a crumbling foundation of 1902. There were doors into the sides of the trail that looked just like hobbit doors.

When we got back to the car, we ate our lunch, toasting in the sun. The car lot was on a low spot between two mountains, so we could see the trade wind clouds blowing in clouds on the northeast side of the caldera. Inside the caldera, the clouds were still sparse.

Our next hike was about 10 km in length and nearly 5 hours long. We climbed the Pico Benjado mountain in the center of the caldera. We climbed about 600 meters straight up. The climb was grueling and since we started in the afternoon most of the hike was in the fog and mist of the clouds that were dumping into the caldera from the northeast. The fog kept us from seeing much except the next switchback up the mountain and we trudged on.

After 2 hours of hiking, we reached the cloud line. All of a sudden our heads popped out from the clouds where the sun was shining brightly. Time to take off some layers! The view was absolutely fantastic and we couldn't remember the past 2 hours. Here, above the clouds, we could see the tips of the various mountains that surrounded us as well as out to the ocean where the clouds thinned to reveal the sea. We could even see the snow-capped peak of El Teide on Tenerife. We were only there a few days ago.

At this point in the hike I started snapping hundreds of photos. We hadn't even reached the peak yet! The sea of clouds beneath us rolled and twirled revealing different parts of the surrounding mountains for just seconds at a time. If you've ever hiked above the cloud line, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Finally, we reached the peak of Pico Benjado, nearly 1900 meters above sea level. What a marvelous view. From here we had a 360 degree view of the entire caldera. The clouds filled the caldera and we could see the U-shape clearly above the clouds. We could see across to where the famous observatory sits on the north side of the caldera. We could see down to where our car sat under a blanket of clouds. We could look out and guesstimate where our apartment sat under a blanket of clouds. We could see where the clouds dissipated over the sea and the sun shown yellow reflected in the ocean. We could see several more volcanoes that follow almost a linear path down to the south tip of the island. And of course we could see El Teide peeking out on Tenerife.

We spent nearly an hour up here. The only reason we had to leave was to be able to hike down in the light of day. Otherwise, I could have just stayed here forever. Sunset would have been phenomenal from this vantage point. I filled my memory card with photos.

Knowing that we would reach the car just as the light disappeared behind the horizon, we finally started hiking back after 5pm. To our amazement, the top of the clouds was now at a much lower elevation, and seemed to be dropping as we hiked. The hike back was completely different from the hike up and not just because we were going downhill. We could see that we had been hiking along a ridgeline with views on both sides. This was truly an amazing hike back. Only when we were 30 minutes away from the car did we finally dip beneath the clouds again.

We had some amazing moments where we would hike into the low of the ridgeline and feel the clouds rushing over us as they passed from one side of the caldera to the other. We saw some gorgeous sights of the sun shining through the fog. I wish I could post all the photos I took, but I would need a much faster internet connection for that. So, you will just have to imagine and wait until I get back to Houston and process some of these hopefully magnificent photos.

It was nearly dark when we reached the car and we found that we were the last ones here. At least I don't have to worry about the tiny parking lot and my large vehicle. =) On the drive out of the park, all light finally disappeared and we crept out along the winding road.

As we headed back to our apartment in Los Llanos, we were happy to find a restaurant along the way that was open this early at 7:30. The food was great. Mark really loves the Mojo verde sauce served here to dip fries into. We both had a yummy pork steak covered in onions.

Today was a magnificent day. If we were to leave La Palma right now I'd be happy. Tomorrow morning we'll probably sleep in and spend some time being lazy on the porch before finding another spot on the island to explore.

rolling blanket of clouds

From inside the clouds looking at the sun.

Lazy vacation

Day 11 (February 12, 2011)

Today was an amazing day for us. It means a short blog post for you, but for us it was amazing to do absolutely nothing today. We spent the whole day just sitting on the porch chatting and using the wifi. I was able to finish booking the rest of our trip. Mark was able to happily play some of his ipad games. With the sun on our backs and the view in front of us, I can't think of a better way to spend a day of vacation.

For breakfast this morning we simply walked outside to the orange trees and picked several oranges for some freshly-squeezed orange juice to have with our meal. I could certainly get used to this.

Eventually we did go out and drive the 10 km to Puerto Naos down on the eastern coast. La Palma is not a touristy island, but if there had to be a tourist town, this would be it. It didn't feel touristy at all, but we were able to find a good restaurant to eat at. In fact, La Roca was right on the shore of a small little cove. The tide was coming in and smashing into a large rock that was the center point of this cove. The crashing waves and good seafood made this dinner special.

Tomorrow we'll head to the center of the island where the national park protects the caldera of the island and do some hiking. Today we just had fun being lazy.

Oranges picked from the trees outside, lemon cookies, and avocados picked from the trees outside all by Mama Rosa who owns these apartments.

4 hours to the best view on the island

Day 10 (February 11, 2011)

Itinerary: check out of hotel, pickup rental car, visit visitor's center for park info, drive to Los Llanos and check into apartment

This morning started off really cold as both Mark and I realized there were not enough covers on our bed overnight at the Rocamar Apartments in Santa Cruz, La Palma. We got in late last night. The ferry trip ended up taking about an hour longer than we had originally thought because it stopped at La Gomera island. Also, we found out that Mark does and can get seasick. I was very happy my Dramamine worked. We didn't get to our room at the Rocamar until after 10pm where we found the Reception closed. Boo. we had just booked the room that morning, but low and behold, there was a note and keys to our room sitting on a table. Awesome. Points for Rocamar.

It is too bad we are only staying one night as we are passing through Santa Cruz. The apartment room we had was lovely with a balcony opening up to the ocean just down below. There was a kitchen/sitting area separate from the bedroom as well. The breakfast here was rather lacking in variety, but I was surprised there was any breakfast at all since this is an apartment rental building.

We warmed up with the rising sun over the ocean into our room and used the free wifi to book tonight's stay at some apartments in Los Llanos. We only spent a few minutes researching this location, but it seemed decent enough. We will stay here for 6 nights while we visit La Palma, the beautiful island.

The rental car we had booked yesterday showed up at our hotel just as we asked them to online. This trip is really working out! They were downstairs waiting for us with our automatic transmission car. I had booked a very small car, but apparently they were all out because a big SUV sat parked downstairs. Oof. This was all they had and there was no extra fee of course. But, boy does this make me feel like an American now!

The plan was to drive across the island to the west side where Los Llanos sits just on the west side of the park that covers the center of the island. We drove straight up the mountain and through various tunnels before we reached the Parque Nacional de la Caldera de Taburiente in the center of the island. The island was of course formed by volcanoes, and there are several volcanic craters on this island. This is the biggest and has many hiking trails through it.

The visitor's center was full of information about the park and the island. We were impressed with the amount of displays and the sculpted relief drawing of the whole island. We picked up maps in English and had a picnic lunch here as well.

We figured that after lunch our goal should be to find our apartment for the next several days and then head down to the western coast and check out Puerto Naos. That was the plan, anyway. First we got lost. We got very lost. Our google maps printout did not help at all, and I had to back up our boat of a car and make multi-point turn-arounds down many tiny and steep streets. Eek indeed! Finally, we stopped at the information center in Los Llanos to get a map and better directions. well, we got a small map and the gist of where we were going, but our apartment was off the map, so good luck to us.

Amazingly we found the street where our apartment was supposed to be. It was of course a steep street and we drove up and down, up and down, up and down slowly looking for it. there were several tiny, narrow streets off to the side and we finally just parked our boat and took off on foot looking for this place. We found lots of barking dogs, several places that might have been holiday rental places, but nothing with the sign for our apartment.

Very discouraged, we finally gave up and headed back to the small town to find an internet cafe to book a different place. By now we'd been searching for this place for nearly 3 hours. I checked my email and sure enough, there was an email from the apartment people telling us to meet them at a store in town and they would drive us up to the apartments. Awesome. So, no need to book a new place. We shall persist!

Oh....but the store was closed because it's the afternoon and time for the Spanish siesta. Well, that was fun. But at least inside the store, we did see a sign that advertised our apartments so we knew we were in the right place. An hour on a shady bench later, we entered the little shop and they took our info for the apartment. A lady came down and has us follow her car up the same street we had driven up and down. Well, if we had hoofed it just a couple more tiny streets up, we would have found it. Oh well. Here we are now and the apartments look amazing. We are on the side of a mountain with unobstructed views all the way down to the sea down below. To our left we can see the rim of the caldera of the park and in front of us the sun will set over the ocean. The apartment, Casitas Rosheli, has a pool, free wifi, a kitchen, laundry facilities, and pretty much everything we will want in a place to stay for 6 days. We are glad we didn't give up. This looks like a perfect place.

Finally, we can relax and unwind. The balcony area has the best wifi access and several chairs so we can watch the sun set while we do some travel research for the rest of our vacation. It was so wonderful to sit and watch the clouds roll over the mountain and then turn pinks and purples as the sun dipped close to the horizon. The weather got chilly once the sun went down and it was time for dinner.

Our only plan for today at this point is dinner and groceries. Luckily we accomplished both this evening down in the town of Los Llanos. Most of the tourists that come here are German, and I'm sure that the restaurant we found was mostly German. They had a selection of corn pancakes or sweet corn crep. We weren't sure what we'd get so we ordered one of each with some fries. The corn pancakes were like a hamburger with the filling of your choice, but the bun part was a corn based pancake. The sweet corn crep was much larger and can only be described as a burrito of the filling of your choice. The tortilla part was a flat corn cake. Everything was yummy, though different.

And now it's time for bed. Tomorrow is a new adventure. We'll be at the Casitas Rosheli until we leave La Palma on the 17th.

View from Rocamar

View from Casitas Rosheli