spring break in the canaries

in an effort to get to more new places, caitlin and i headed the canary islands for spring break. we hoped for warm weather and time on the beach.

those goals were sort of met?

we flew direct from milan to tenerife. it is so easy to travel around europe and the surrounding areas that it makes the travel options around the u.s. look shameful.

there we are, off the west african coast
don't mind all the travel saves i'm collecting all over europe

the beach in costa adeje

and it's not often that we don't enjoy a place, but tenerife is one place that falls into that category. our airbnb was not great. the food in the area is so touristy: every menu was huge, with pictures and seven languages of explanations. and we quickly tired of the walk from our airbnb to the beach. it wasn't that far, but with an annoying overpass in between the two, we weren't thrilled.

something i did enjoy: the coffee, complete with sweetened condensed milk 

we complain, but life could be worse #firstworldproblems

marina in tenerife

thankfully, we had planned only a few days in the costa adeje area. we had read about a neighboring island in an article and so we hopped the ferry and took a ride to la gomera.

la gomera

it seemed like an easy ask to get to valley gran rey when we researched beforehand. we took the ferry from tenerife without issue and found the local bus that would take us to our destination.

if you look at this map, we started to the right of the blue dot in san sebastian de la gomera. this is the ferry port from tenerife. the bus takes you up over the mountain top of the island and down into the valley marked with a yellow star. i had expected it to be about 60 to 90 minutes, but i think in the end it was more like 2.5 to 3 hours to make the whole journey. we started to feel motion sickness, as the roads were all curvy and steep.

took this when we were finally getting closer. the town at the beach was our destination.

happily we booked a really nice two story apartment in valle gran rey. we had a little patio, a living room, kitchen and a bedroom upstairs. the wifi was temperamental but we managed. the restaurants in this area were of much better quality and we found quite a few interesting options. we shopped at the small markets for snacks to take to the beach each day.

spanish wine...the canary islands are part of spain

the beaches are black sand.
it is a volcano after all.

the weather wasn't perfectly beach weather, so we didn't swim too much.
the people watching was pretty amazing. and unbelievable.

the nudity on the beaches here by far exceeded any amount i anticipated or expected. it seems that no european visiting here would ever sit in a wet swimsuit. they'd come to the beach in street clothes and change on the beach, then hop in the water for a swim and once out of the water immediately change into a second dry swimsuit. many would change back into the wet suit if they were to get in the water again. all i can say is 'no way' would i ever go to the beach if it involved that much effort.

ask us sometime to tell you about the yoga on the beach. now that was something.

we ended the week with another long bus ride across this tiny island and ferry back to tenerife. another interesting airbnb experience before heading back to milan. it wasn't our most amazing spring break, but interesting nonetheless.

travel tips: avoid any and all tourist areas in the canaries. la gomera was fine, but i would suggest a rental car to skip the bus ride.