What Do You Want?

After exploring the surroundings of the Hotel during our first day on Gran Canaria Silke and I went to have a look at the rest of the island yesterday. We decided to visit the Pinar de Tamadaba, a large pine forrest in the nothern part of the island.

After two hours of driving over mountain roads with lots and lots of serpentines we stopped for lunch at the restaurant La Candelilla. As we weren’t even close to our destination yet we changed our plans and settled on visiting the nearby Roque Nublo. The Roque Nublo is a 64 metre tall basalt monolith. It was created by volcanic activity over 3 million years ago.

The landscape in the mountains was spectacular. We grabbed a bottle of water and began the climb up the rocky path.

The air was hot and smelled intensely of pines. Altogether it felt like walking in a dry sauna until we were above the treeline. The landscape up there reminded me of pictures of the surface of the moon.

Another quarter of an hour later we finally reached the Roque Nublo. The view from up there was worth the effort. I was very happy that altitude sickness didn’t stop me this time.

After a few minutes we made our way back to the car park. Down there we bought a few bottles of mineral water because we had gotten very thirsty in the meantime. After a short break we drove back to the Hotel in good spirits.

Once again Silke found a very nice hotel for us: The Lopesan at the Costa Meloneras. The hotel is a beautiful resort with a nice palm garden and a big swimming pool with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.

The breakfast buffet is rich with delicacies and you can sit outside on the terrace in the shade. Our room is nice and spacious and the air conditioning keeps it cool without being unpleasant.

The bathroom is spotless clean and has a shower cabin that I would like to take home with me. And the balcony provides a real nice view on the garden:

If there is anything to complain about it is the Internet access via WiFi that the Hotel provides. It is a bit expensive, you have to go the reception to get an account and a password and the network connection is neither very fast nor very reliable.

Last year Silke and I focused our time and resources on finding a new home. But this year it was time for another nice holiday trip. After looking at various nice locations like Crete we decided to visit Gran Canaria.

Because we both don’t like getting up in the middle of the night to catch our plane my wife booked a flight in the afternoon. Like our flight to Tenerife it was operated by Monarch Airlines. As we had forgotten to book seats with extra legroom online in time we asked while checking in our luggage. We were very lucky and got seats in row 4 for free. Row 4 turned out to be quite spacious and is part of the so called extra legroom seats. After a quiet and pleasant flight with excellent sight most of time we arrived at the Gran Canaria Airport. The airport building was nice and clean and we managed to get through the passport controls and baggage reclaim in less than 15 minutes.

After finally finding our rental car (a Volkswagen Polo as he had hoped for) in the spacious multi-storeycar park we took off to the hotel. After driving for about half an hour we found the hotel after a minor detour. We were greeted by a member of staff driving around on a Segway. He arranged the transport of our luggage and showed me where to par the car. We marveled at the impressive hotel building for a moment and finally entered.