What Do You Want?

After spending most of Sunday relaxing and talking a walk at the nearby coastline we went on our first excursion of Tenerife yesterday. We decided to visit Icod de los Vinos to see the famous Dragon Tree. We followed a road which took us along the south coast for a while and winded through the montains in numerous serpentines towards the north coast later. We really appreciated both the air conditioning and the power steering of our rental car during the journey. After two hours we finally arrived in Ico de los Vinos and got a first glance a the marvelous tree from the forcecourt of the church. We decided to buy tickets for the Parco del Drago and have a closer look. The park is full with beautiful plants, displays of the original inhabitans of Tenerife and little lizards. And finally we got a perfect view on the Dragon Tree:

It’s a really impressive tree especially if you stand underneath its crown.

We took a different route for the way back: first east towards Puerto de la Cruz, then south to the east coast and finallly west along the coast back to La Caleta. Although it was the longer route it took less time because we good use a dual carriageway most of the way. When we refueld our rental car we were positively surprised about the fuel prices: 0.62€ per litre Diesel. It seems to have been an eternity ago that one could buy fuel for such a price anywhere in Europe.

The hotel turned out to be marvelous. An impressive building directly at the coast with great hotel rooms like this one:

The bathroom is very luxurious with a washbasin for each of us, a large shower cabin and a bath tub.

I’m going to miss that shower when we return home because it works much better than the usual electric shower in a house in England.

The hotel is definitely geek compatible. Besides providing a fine working Wireless LAN with an afforable weeky rate the room also includes a safe which is large enough for a notebook. The safe even has a power outlet on the inside which allows you to recharge your equipment while it is locked away.

After a good night rest we were looking forward to the breakfast. The hotel offers a stunning buffet: all kinds of bread, cheese, cold meat and jam, donuts, waffles, pancakes, donuts, fruits, joghurts, eggs and lots more. The only problem was to decide what to eat. But fortunately we have a week to try out everything. 🙂

Yesterday the time had finally come: my wife and I went on our overdue holiday. We’ve a booked a week in a nice hotel on Tenerife.

Our flight left London Luton Airport at 14:45 which meant that we didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night. The drive from Cambridge took only little more than an hour and we found the long term parking without problesm. The airport is quite small but they’ve build a really nice terminal in the last two years. The restriction on hand luggage have fortunately been relaxed and we were allowed to take our backpacks (with the notebook and the digital camera inside) on the plane.
The flight was operated by Monarch Airlines. The service on board was good although not free. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on the onbard entertainment system and spend the rest of the time reading a book. The seating was allright because we bought an upgrade to get seats next to emergency exit.

After uneventful fours of flight time we arrived at the south Airport on Tenerife and picked up our rental car. We only booked a compact car but were lucky and got a free upgrade to a Citroën Xsara Picasso with a Diesel engine. It took as 20 minutes to get to the hotel where we finally could get some rest.