Hotel Tenerife Princess Playa de las Americas

I first visited Tenerife in 1970 with my parents, it was our second holiday abroad. I have been returning ever since. First with my young children, and now just my wife and I. Although the children, now adults in there 20s still ask, 'when can we come'.

A couple of years ago, we bought a second home just outside Puerto de la Cruz, with a view of spending the winter months here in our retirement. In the meantime we come out two or three times a year 'on holiday'.

Ein bisschen wie nach Hause kommen...
im Anflug auf den Nordflughafen kommt der so oft erklommene Teide mit seinen nun allerdings betrachtet ein wenig laecherlich anmutenden 3817 metern in den Blick,
ein Schritt aus dem Flughafengebaeude und man ist in bekannten Gefilden, wartet auf den seit Jahren bekannten Bus und steht eine halbe Stunde spaeter vor dem wohlbekannten Appartement in Puerto de la Cruz...
mit einem eigenen Herd, einem Kuehlschrank ...

... congested on Tuesdays and Fridays when most of the charter flights arrive, so pick another day. For this visit I stayed in the Jardin Tropical Hotel, although I have visited this hotel many times it was my first stay ...

... Ronnie zdecydowal, ze musimy isc cos zjesc na stolowke. Jak wrocilismy, 15 minut, i przypomnialo mu sie, ze zapomnial stamtad czegos. Widelcow. "Po co nam widelce, przeciez tyle co jedlismy?" "Zjemy sobie makaron z naszymi ludkami w laboratorium. Oni tak ciezko pracuja, drukujac cala noc..." No tak, byla noc formalna, a z 3 drukarek tylko 1 nam dzialala - juz drugi miesiac. To oznaczalo, ze jesli drukujesz po "formalinie", to bedziesz tkwic w ...

Andy was feeling better after the sleep - his cold is still bad but at least his ear ache is better. Today we just took it easy - preparing for the flight to Barcelona tomorrow. John and Dale did laundry (3E each for wash and laundry!). The weather was overcast with a light drizzle a couple of times so no sun tanning today. I went to a cafe that had free wifi if you bought a drink so I had a couple of cups of coffee as I caught up my blog, surfing etc. It was alot easier than the ...

... darker thena the surrounding ground and no vegetation had taken hold yet. We had 1 more stop where we had the 'opportunity' again to buy stuff such as catus berry jam and spreads. We didn't. And then we arrived back to the resort area but it took an hour to deliver all the other people to their hotels before we arrived at ours. While I loved the views, next time we would book a private van or a smaller tour group so we could have more time ...

... relaxing. For lunch, we went to the 'Penny Farthing' restaurant. Not very Spanish but very British. The hamburgers ($4E) were very good as well as the pint of beer ($1.5E). All of the other patrons were watching some football (ie. soccer) game on the telly. For the afternoon, Andy and I just read while lounging on the balcony at the condo. John and Dale walked up the cliff and had a wonderful view of the coast. For ...

Today we just walked around the beaches and shopping areas of Los Cristianos and Los Americanos - the 2 resort areas of the southern tip of Tenerife. It looked like it was going to rain in the early afternoon but it again cleared up and was a beautiful 20 degrees. Andy and I had a wonderful pistachio ice cream cone on sitting on a bench by the beach. We also had a lousy burger ...

We woke up at 7am to start our trip via the metro to the airport. The metro wasn't too crowed considering it was rush hour. We reveresed our metro stops from when we arrived and it took about 40 minutes to get to the airport. It was very cheap since we still had the metro tickets left from the 10 pack we bought when we arrived. It did cost 1 Euro to exit the metro system at the airport (airport supplement fee they call it). We flew on Spanair - a low cost ...

... throughout the day and there's certainly more people about compared to yesterday, I even had to wait a while to be seated for my breakfast! By afternoon the wind and seas had subsided somewhat leaving a pleasant day with temperatures around 12-13°C. I've never had so many positive comments about my age before with most people thinking I'm in my 40s, it left me feeling great, until in a moment of vain reflection I realised that they we all ...