22.1.11
Do Not Despair.
8:06 PM | 
Posted by
Maj
Dear Lord, this is awesome.
Ladies and gents (and Baltic demi-gods of 80s synth lines with names rhyming with Saul):
Last year, I did some very important research concerning places where I'd like to end up in the long run. In the process, I discovered that the people of the blogosphere largely agree that the Canary Islands have the best weather in the world. (Not many work opportunities, though: presuming (in pipe-dream) I end up working at a university, the only one here teaches exclusively in Spanish. Just a place to visit, then, I guess.) A couple of months ago, I mentioned my eventual plans to go there to Adam, another MoL student in Amsterdam. He'd been to Tenerife (the biggest of the Islands) and said he really enjoyed it, so within a couple of weeks I decided to go there, too.
Tenerife Adam.
The ticket prices were pretty reasonable -- under €100, with stops in Barcelona both ways. I booked a relatively cheap room in Barcelona through EasyJet and, er... ended up with this:
The FiraCongress has free WiFi and no English TV channels.
Not having eaten (and staying outside of the city centre), I decided to get a room service "Club Sandwich". The scare-quotes are appropriate because the sandwich had slices of ham, tuna and an egg-in-a-basket top slice. Actually, eggs are in everything here: egg and potato omelettes on a baguette, "eggs and chips"... you name it.
...And now for a story you've probably already heard: when I talked to Adam about coming to Tenerife, he said he came with no accommodation reservations and everything worked out. He recommended I do the same and "keep my options open", so I did… but I'm not a very relaxed/adventurous type, so I panicked once I got to the airport on a Friday night, thinking everything would be booked everywhere. (I spent some time looking up places to stay while in Barcelona, and there were alarmingly few hotels with vacancies over the weekend.) Worried I might end up sleeping on the street if I didn't find a place to stay very soon, I got a list of hotels from the info desk, called a random place in Los Cristianos (about 20km from the airport) and made a reservation immediately.
I took a cab to the hotel and walked in. Never had I seen so many old people in one place. They were EVERYWHERE -- in the lobby, in the restaurant, in the bar, everywhere. No one there (apart from the hotel staff) was under 60. No one.
I went to the hotel counter, thinking I may have made some sort of mistake, since this didn't seem like a… regular hotel? I thought I must've been at a senior resort. But there was a reservation under my name, so I paid for my room and ran for the elevator so I could hide upstairs. As I was waiting for the elevator, the only other twenty-something guest I'd seen showed up. We waited for our elevator in solidarity/awkward silence while some old British man tried to chat us up (in that sweet but lame old-man-humour way) about all the elevators being stuck on the 4th floor. Actually, within the time I was at that hotel, three old men told me old-man jokes about the elevators… one in Spanish. sigh.
The room was nice, but not nearly as nice as the cheaper place in Barcelona. Its hair dryer wins first prize in both the Weirdest Dryer and Best Approximation to an Elephant's Trunk categories:
...I seriously thought it was a vacuum cleaner at first.
The view was outstanding, though.
Los Cristianos sunrise.
Again, being not so great at relaxing and well-trained in the ways of panic, I worried about where I'd stay and what I'd do over the next couple of days. The Tenerife Sur airport had no internet whatsoever (not even pay-machines!) and the WiFi in my hotel cost € 4 an hour to use, and I somehow had to figure out where to stay, make reservations and get out of Seniorville. (It's come to my attention now that my hotel wasn't exceptional... the whole neighbourhood here is teeming with British and German people born well before the 50s.) Thankfully, I did a little walking around after checking out, bought a much needed (€6.50!) bag, some crappy pink sandals which clearly belong on a tiny Japanese tourist, and some sunscreen, and found a café with free WiFi. That gave me the opportunity to settle everything (and rest assured that, yes, there is internet access on Tenerife.) I'll be staying in hotels in the Northern, capital city of Santa Cruz for the next four days. Incidentally, about those sandals: I changed into them at the café and was immediately annoyed with them. They were painfully big and destroying my toes with every step. Eventually, I gave up on wearing them and went to a store to buy another pair, but nothing there was more comfortable than what I was already wearing -- so I left, walked for two blocks and decided to put socks on or something. That, my friends, is when I noticed these things were actually adjustable. They fit like a dream now and it's all gravy. So ends my acute bout of despair. :)
We'll chat again once I'm in Santa Cruz. xo!
SENIORS.
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