Tenerife - Dias 1 | Jurnal de Calatorie

It's about time I tried writing a blong entry in english. You know, just so my mom won't be able to read it.

Some while ago, during what passes as summer in Britain, Catalina sold me a great tip: Tenerfie in autumn is A. Not that expensive and B. Not that cold. Armed with this great knowledge, I decided to investigate the matter. She was right! What was left for me to do (besides actually buying the tickets) was to find a partner in crime. Since Adi likes vacations as much as I do, that wasn't a hard sell.

Some time later I ended up buying plane tickets to Tenerife's South Airport, paying for the hotel (obviously placed in the North of the island because... geography be damned!), the car (VW Polo with an engine smaller than my IQ) and the bus to Luton. All this for the affordable price of 290L per person. All in all, not bad for a week of vacationing.

Now, let's try to create a quick time-line of the day:

11:03 Turned off the lights and went to sleep

12:13 Realised in less than 3 hours I have to be awake; alas, sleep still eludes me

??:?? Finally, sweet sweet sleep

2:32 WTF! Already?! Ok, ok, I'm up. Barely

3:05 Left the premises and headed for the bus station

3:27 Bus arrives 6 minutes earlier than scheduled. We are there, waiting for it. Uuu-yea

4:24 Bus ride takes exactly the time mentioned on the ticket. Nice!

6:40 Plane takes off 20 minutes later than mentioned on the ticket

10:20 Plane arrives 45 minutes earlier. This works for us. Until we have to wait 15 minutes in the airport-terminal bus for...reasons?

Next step, picking up the car. This is where it starts to get messy.

The car rental company has moved office from the airport and now has a shuttle service that it's supposed to take you to it. Problem is there are no clear signs to where the shuttle is supposed to be (there are dozen of buses in the parking lot), people don't know much about it and generally only speak a few words of english (kudos!). Some time later we get a general ideea of where we sould go by interogating anyone who seems to be working in the bus/van/shuttle area. Some of them don't even work there but we ask anyway.

Finally, we find the shuttle bus, we get to the Avis/Budget's new branch. (why does it have 2 names? Is it one or 2 companies? And why people moslty display the Avis logo when we rented the car from Budget? What the hell is going on here?)

There is a nice lady (aka sexy) at the counter and that makes the whole process seem short, although it probably wasn't.

We get the car. I drive around the island for about 60 km or so. It's so damn good to be driving again, even a car with as many horse power as a 2 horse carriage. There are 25 degrees outside and mostly sunny. Really windy as well.

We get to Puerto de la Cruz. Fancy name. I can imagine a pirate treasure being buried nearby. Parking is free (take that London!) but I have to go round downtown for 3 times to find a spot. At least I get to learn my surroundings a bit. The hotel is less than 100 meters from the beach. Now I can relax and post on facebook. And enjoy the sun.

While Adi goes to sleep I go for a walk and lunch. I get hammered and munch on grilled octupus with garlic sauce. I catch some more rays and then I head back to the hotel, nursing a great head-ache.

When we wake up it's time for an evening stroll. This gives us enough time to notice the vast majority of patrons are of the same age as my grandma. Mostly german. That's cool but not really. At least the food is good.