Tag: Spain

La Palma to Gran Canaria

Saturday we took a plane from the island of La Palma to the island of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. It was about a one hour flight. Here’s a link to my La Palma video.

Leaving La Palma

We took the bus into Las Palmas de Gran Canaria where we are staying.

The view from our room

The big Carnival parade on Gran Canaria was Saturday night. Our hotel is right next to the parade route.

We stood in one place for a couple of hours watching the people with beautiful elaborate costumes go by. Then came a series of buses and semi trucks with rolling bars and lots of people on and following each one.

We watched a while, then walked around some, then went up to the restaurant at the top of our hotel to have dinner. The parade started around 6 and when we were eating at 10:30 it was still going on!

Cheese board to share as part of our dinner
The Carnival parade from the restaurant at the top of our hotel

La Gomera to La Palma

We took an 8 pm ferry Thursday night from the island of La Gomera to the Island of La Palma in the Canaries. With so late a departure we had all day to enjoy La Gomera. It was the clearest day we have had since we arrived. We could easily see Tenerife with the Teide Volcano across the channel.

Tenerife and Teide Volcano from La Gomera

We drove to Playa Santiago, the next town along the coast and had coffee overlooking the beach I tested the water and it seemed relatively warm.

Coffee in Playa Santiago
Playa Santiago

We stopped at a viewpoint on our way back to San Sebastián. We could see how the trade wind clouds coming from the north east get stopped by the mountains. The sign at the viewpoint said that it is estimated that the volume of water provided by these clouds is five times what the area gets from rain.

Trade wind clouds are stopped by the mountains.

We knew we would arrive at the Parador on La Palma after the dining room closed. The person at the front desk in La Gomero called La Palma and they said they would give us dinner in our room. We didn’t get to the Parador in La Palma until about 11pm but then we had a great dinner.

Dinner at the Parador in La Palma

Here is a link to the video I made of our time in La Gomera

La Gomera

As you may know I have a YouTube channel. I post trip videos on the channel every few days. I’m going to try to remember to link to my videos here when I post them. I posted my video of Tenerife yesterday.

We arrived on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands yesterday. Today we drove around the island. La Gomera is the second smallest of the Canary Islands. Its area is only about 142 square miles. The terrain is rugged with spectacular ravines.

It was interesting to see how the vegetation changed as we drove around the island. on the south side where we are staying it is very dry and desert like. On the north side of the island the vegetation is much greener and denser because of moisture from the trade wind clouds.

We stopped a couple of times to hike in the Garajonay National Park in the center of the island.

We saw this plant on each hike. I thought it should be called a dandelion tree. But I was wrong. It is a Hawk’s Beard Bush!

Hawk’s Beard Bush

We ate dinner at the Parador again.

Watercress soup
Roast goat

London to Tenerife in the Canary Islands

This morning we flew from London Gatwick to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The Canaries are a part of Spain. They are located off the northwest coast of Africa. The latitude is similar to the latitude of Florida.

Gatwick Airport
Gomera Island in the Canary Islands

The airport in Tenerife is right next to the ocean. We rented a car and drove to the Parador Cañadas del Teide. The Parador is at an altitude of about 7000 feet on the side of the the Volcano Teide in the middle of Las Cañadas Del Teide National Park. We explored a bit and then relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. We can see the volcano Teide from the window of our room.

Viewpoint on the road to Teide National Park
Teide Volcano
Enjoying our welcome drinks in the Parador bar.

The road from the airport to our Parador was very good but also very narrow and winding. We saw a lot of bicycles both going up and coming down the road.

Parador Cañadas del Teide.

The height of the Teide Volcano is more than 12,000 feet. It is the highest point in Spain. There is a cable car (teleferico) that would take us to within 500 meters of the top of Teide but it is very windy here today so the cable car is closed. I don’t think we’ll hike up!

Our room price includes dinner and breakfast. We celebrated our first dinner in Spain and first Parador of this trip with an excellent meal

Tuna and a salad
Steak
Date ice cream with raspberry sauce