Our Island Paradise

Tenerife, February 11-18, 2008

After so many vacations where we pack in as much as is humanly possible, we decided to take a totally different type of trip for this year’s ski break in February. The girls, in particular dd#3, wanted one where we played on the beach, swam in the pool, and didn’t go from city to city. Well, actually, dd#3 want to take a cruise, but a beach vacation was what we decided on. After some research, we chose the island of Tenerife, in the Spanish Canary Islands.

While the Canary Islands are owned by Spain, they are actually part of Africa, so the girls were excited to be able to say we’ve been to Africa now. We all enjoyed the fact that, because we were going just 70 miles off the coast of Morocco, the weather would be warm, even in February. We looked at different vacation packages and picked an all-inclusive resort – Park Club Europe – in Playa de Las Americas on Tenerife.

The Canary Islands are practically unknown as a vacation spot for Americans, mostly because there’s no direct flight there, I imagine. But Tenerife, Grand Canaria and the rest of the islands are a vacation hot spot for British and German tourists. There are great package deals including airfare and such and we purchased one through Sato Travel with TUIfly. We left Frankfurt very early on Monday morning, February 11, after putting my sister Patty on a flight back to the U.S. the day before. Tenerife is about a 4½-hour flight from Frankfurt, so it wasn’t bad and went fairly quickly.

We arrived in Tenerife and quickly got to our hotel – before the rooms were even ready and before lunch was served at 1 p.m. Although I couldn’t wait to get out of my long pants and into shorts, we stowed our luggage and explored both the resort and the immediate area. After we got into our rooms, everyone changed and we headed out to explore.

We spent most of the week just as we’d hoped to – playing games, reading books, hanging out and swimming in the pool, and playing and swimming at the beach – it was only a short walk from our resort to the Atlantic Ocean. We went for two different afternoons and the girls built huge sand castles with moats, walls, towers and shell decorations. They had quite an audience of little kids watching them build and dd#2 said it made her feel like she was 7 again.

On Wednesday, we took a day-long tour to Loro Parque, a large sea world-type animal park. We really enjoyed the dolphin show, the orca show and the sea lion show, as well as the penguin exhibit. The girls went to the bird show as well, but dd#2 really didn’t enjoy that one too much – all those birds flying overhead. :)

On Friday, we took a half-day tour to Tiede, the volcanic mountain in the center of Tenerife. Tiede is the highest mountain in Spain and it was very cold and windy when we got to the top of the cable car ride up the side of the mountain. DD#2 didn’t react well to the height, and I was suffering from a little motion-sickness from the bus ride, so she and I didn’t stay up there long, but dh and dds#1&3 explored quite a bit. The landscape around Tiede was remarkable and we could see why they filmed the Planet of the Apes movie there – it looked other-worldly.

Besides the two tours, we spent most of our time at the resort, just being lazy. We played dominoes, Phase 10, Uno, Wicked Words, and card games like Rainbow, Hearts, and Euchre. The girls watched some movies in the evening on their laptops and went to the resort’s shows a few of the nights. Both dd#1 & dd#2 tried their hands at Archery while dd#3 took a scuba diving lesson in the pool – and really liked it! The weather was heavenly, even with about 6 total minutes of rain all week. The clouds blew in and quickly out nearly every day, but most of the time was sunny, warm and wonderful.

As an all-inclusive resort, there was food and drinks – both alcoholic and non-alcoholic – available all day long, in addition to two coolers of bottled water free for the taking. There was breakfast, lunch and dinner in the main dining room, plus snacks and lunch by the pool, bar-b-que dinners three of the nights, and a continental breakfast for those who slept in.

Dh was able to get online with his laptop a few times and I checked email via the hotel’s computers, since it was Girl Scout cookie time at home. But mostly, we stayed away from our “real” life back in Frankfurt and truly enjoyed spending time with each other and reading and napping on our own. I finished 7 books in the week – and felt truly refreshed. We arrived back home on Monday evening, March 18, tired but happy. We had a wonderful time and highly recommend the Canary Islands to anyone looking for an inexpensive island resort with nearly perfect temperatures – February is supposed to be the cold month of the year, with temps in the low-70’s, but even in July and August, it only gets up to the mid-80’s. Definitely a nice place to get away!

A whirilwind visit from my sister Patty

The first 10 days of February flew by in a flash this year, thanks to a visit from my sister Patty and our attempt to show her as many sights during those 10 days as possible.

She arrived on Friday and we decided to introduce her to the Raclette tradition at dinner that night. After discovering Raclette on our trip to Luzern, Switzerland last year, it's quickly become a favorite.

On Saturday, we all headed to Rüdesheim for a walk around the city, festive Fasching lunch celebration and then a beautiful drive up the Rhine river as far as the Loreley monument and back. It was windy and quite cold but the sun was shining and the views were lovely. Sunday took us to Köln (Cologne) for a big Fasching parade that lasted for hours, with all kinds of floats, high school (gymnasium) groups, and lots of drunken revelers.

On Monday, Patty & I flew to Florence, Italy for a 3-day sister trip. Since our flight landed in Pisa, it was quite late by the time we got to Florence, so we went to dinner and walked around a bit. Tuesday was super-sight day, though, where we started early with sunrise at the Ponte Vecchio, toured the magnificent renaissance art in the Uffizi Museum, moved on to walk all 463 steps to the top of the Duomo, and saw the statue of David in all his glory. In addition, we walked all over the central part of the city, visiting the the Plazza della Repubblica, Plazza Santa Croce, Plazza Santa Maria Novella, Plazza della Signoria, passing the Bargello museum, and visiting the Ponte Vecchio again at sunset. We had a nice Italian dinner, some wine, and fell exhausted into our beds. We took in an outdoor market early Wednesday morning before the bus ride back to Pisa to fly home to Frankfurt.

Thursday found us in Frankfurt and, after an exciting trip to the grocery store, we took the UBahn downtown and caught the sights of the Romer, the Main river, and downtown Frankfurt. We found a traditional German restaurant for lunch, so Patty was sure to have schnitzel, spätzel, Frankfurter grün sauce, German beer, and kartoffel puffers (potato pancakes) during her German stay.

Friday we left the house at 4:15 in the morning, with DD#1, to catch a bus to Poland with the American Women's Club. We stopped in Seiffen to shop for traditional German Christmas decorations including nutcrackers and pyramids, and then continued on to Poland. We hit a couple of potter shops on Friday night, before checking into our castle hotel for dinner and rest. Saturday was one pottery shop after another but everyone had fun finding bargains. We had a late lunch in a traditional Polish restaurant, stopped at a crystal factory and headed home, getting back at about 2 a.m. This made is somewhat painful to get up and get Patty packed on Sunday morning, to have her to the airport by 10:30, but it was well worth it.

It was a busy week with lots of sights, but hopefully she enjoyed her visit and had so much fun she didn't worry too much about the craziness of moving, buying and selling houses, and getting her life organized at home - all that was waiting for her on her return the the U.S. The visit was a bit of a blur, but fortunately we have good pictures to remember it by.