Category: A week in a warm place

Sunbathing and Paella – 22 February 2023

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We sunbathed all morning and I finished my book about a murder set in Kinlochleven 30 years in the future in a snowstorm. Not at all like Tenerife.

In the afternoon we watched part of the animacion team and one chef making an enormous paella. Unfortunately there were loads of clams and mussels in it, so no use for me. We walked down to the front and eventually found the restaurant of a wee man we’d passed on Friday. He was trying desperately to get us to buy a drink in his restaurant, but we were on a mission that day and promised we’d come back. Eventually we found him and we had that drink. Mine was a Mojito and Scamp found a new kind of Rum. Captain Morgan’s Black Rum is now her best favourite. It’s got an old fashioned caramel or treacle flavour to it. Her Rum & Coke looked and tasted better than my Mojito. We kept ourselves entertained by the antics of the wee owner.

Back at the hotel there was some music we danced to for a while, spoke to a few people we’d nodded to in passing and went back to the room to finish the packing we’d started in the morning.

PoD was a photo of the paella cooking class.

Sat on the balcony later and had a fairly strong G ’n’ T and went to bed.

Homeward bound tomorrow.

The Pianist – 21 February 2023

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Sunbathing in the morning, all morning.

Walked down to the front after lunch and turned right.

Walked almost out to the paragliders landing area because Scamp’s ankle is improving and it’s a good level path for most of the way.

Just to contradict what I said about the weather here, this afternoon was lovely with white clouds in a blue sky and sunshine. We sat for a while watching the waves crashing and I managed some moody landscape shots. I also got a PoD which was an almost silhouetted group of folk walking along the path between palm trees.

In the evening the entertainment was a pianist and we feared the worst, the return of the disinterested woman. However we were pleasantly surprised to see a well dressed man, Rafael Montalvo who started with Einaudi and continued through the Beatles and Queen and had me in tears with his version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. When he was finished, Scamp went and told to him how much we had enjoyed his recital.

Another evening discussing the day on the balcony with another G&T

 

Swimming – 20 February 2023

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Today I was going swimming in the cool upstairs pool.

Not cool as in fashionable, but cool as in not very warm. The upstairs pool on level 5 of the hotel is a long narrow strip of unheated water. The last time we were at the Jacaranda an Italian man told me to take a cold shower before entering the pool because I wouldn’t feel the water so cold then. I remember that it worked. Today I was ready for the shock of the cold water from the shower, but the water in the pool was still a shock to my system. Two lengths of the channel was quite enough for me. It was refreshing, but I was glad to warm up on the sun bed, in the sun.

After lunch we walked down to the front and photographed some flowers. We stopped in at The Pantry for a Barraquito on the way back

There is s definite weather theme on Tenerife:
Clear sky and sun in the morning.
Cloudy just after midday and that cloud doesn’t clear until around 6pm.
Around 6pm the cloud clears and the sun shines for an hour or so.

In the evening in the Piano Bar we sat listening to a guy singing. Quite a decent singer, just nothing we could dance to. Watched a family group of four playing chess. They played every night, rotating round so eveyone got a game.

Eventually we retired to the balcony with G&Ts to keep us company.

PoD was a Hibiscus flower.

Kids Club – 19 February 2023

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Time to get the towels on the sunbeds.

I think the weather, which wasn’t as hot or as wall to wall sunshine as we’d hoped, was our excuse for not getting ourselves a pair of pool towels. Yesterday Scamp had intended to put that right, but the queue at reception was too long to wait in. Today I walked across the road and bought two pool towels, £6 for the two, and if we choose to, we can keep them.

Maybe the weather had noticed our purchase and that’s why it was sunny in the morning. We tested out the towels and sat by the top floor pool and soaked up some rays.

Later we walked down to the coastal path, but walked down the slope, not the steps. Scamp still has a nagging pain in her knee from the amount of walking we’ve been doing, so anything that relieves the pressure on it is worth the effort.

Walked along to a bar and had a mojito. Not very strong, but sweet and nicely lime tasting. Then a gentle walk back to the hotel to sit on the balcony for a while

Tonight we listened to a disinterested pianist playing semi-classical music that nobody was listening to. Well, if she wasn’t interested, why should we be? There would be no dancing tonight, then. Eventually we gave up and went to Kids Club. Scamp was delighted when they played Veo Veo and Coochie Wah! She was so delighted that she immediately messaged Jackie and June to tell them!

The main ‘entertainment’ followed Kids Club and it was two allegedly Indian dancers who gyrated round the floor and screamed! We followed the rest of the audience out of the room.

No entertainment downstairs. No entertainment in the Piano Bar. We adjourned to our balcony and another glass of G ’n’ T.

PoD was a Bird of Paradise flower in the hotel garden. Stunning colours.

Walking with the crowds – 18 February 2023

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After sitting in the sun in the morning we walked down steps to the coastal walk and went left.

It was a bit dull today as the PoD shows. It seems that in the morning the sky is clear and the sun shines, but in the afternoon the clouds roll down from the mountains and it all gets a bit tricky. Later in the afternoon, as the sun is sinking, the clouds clear away again. That’s been the general run of weather so far.

We walked, with everyone else it seemed, as far as Puerto Colon which probably sounds good in Spanish, but has a different meaning in English! We were looking for somewhere to have a quiet lunch with no football on a giant tv. We both agreed on a pizza for lunch. Lots of restaurants and cafes with photos of pizzas, but were any of them capable of making a decent one? Eventually we found what looked like an authentic Italian restaurant called Amalfi which had a sea view but no TV, and we both had a pizza. Scamp had margarita and I had anchovy and olive. Scamp said her pizza had too much cheese, but mine was perfect with a good base and plenty of salty anchovies. We took our time walking back to relieve the pressure on Scamp’s knee and also just to enjoy the place.

We danced tonight to brilliant singer, Beatriz Lopez, who brought along her fan club. Where we’d been dancing with about three or four couples for the past few days, tonight there were about three times that, mostly women, but some men too. I could understand why, because she was charismatic and could follow the mood of the room and work with that. Unlike yesterday’s ‘entertainer’

 

 

Fifty years – 17 February 2023

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Fifty years ago we got married in a wee church in Shettleston in the east end of Glasgow. After the service we went back to Scamp’s mum and dad’s with a few friends and relatives for a Co-op purvey.

I hope you’re sitting comfortably because this is a long blog post!

Today we were blessed with sunshine. After we opened the cards we’d brought with us and had breakfast, we went for a walk. We walked down the slope to the coastal path and turned right. This would take us away from the commercial areas and out to pastures new, an area we hadn’t walked to before.

Scamp was feeling the after effects of yesterday’s longer than required stroll in the other direction and her knee was beginning to give her gyp, so we took it easy on today’s walk. Thankfully I was better dressed today with my baseball cap to protect my head and I’d remembered to put sun cream on before we left the hotel.

We walked for a fair distance out past the viewpoint for the blowhole where, if the tide is right, the incoming waves fill a hole in the rocks and blow up out of a fissure above. Quite impressive if you’re there at the right time. The tide wasn’t far enough in today, unfortunately. Further on we crossed a dried up river bed that’s now home to a host of balancing stone monuments, thousands of them. Then we found a viewpoint near the beach where the paraglider come in to land. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a five frame panorama built in Lightroom to give a really wide view of the mountains and the hotels around here.

We decided to walk back and found a cafe that had some shade and a young bloke took about half an hour to make us a jug of sangria. He was working alone and was having a hard time keeping everybody refilled. The sangria was really good. Freshly made and full of fruit.

Then we met The Man from Salzburg. Scamp wanted to have lunch at a wee restaurant we’d eaten at the last time we were here, and was partly the reason for our walk today. There was queue and we waited patiently (impatiently for me) for a table to become free. Eventually one of the waiters pointed to a table and told us to go there. But there weren’t any empty tables where he pointed. Then the bloke who was smiling at us from a table waved us over. It seems that he was happy to have someone else to talk to while he finished his Barraquito (like a Cortado, but with added condensed milk and Liquor 43). He seemed a happy bloke and when we told him we were from Scotland he explained that he’d travelled all over Scotland on holiday. The only thing he didn’t seem to like was haggis after someone had told him what was in it! He said that he was from Saltzburg in Austria and was on holiday in Tenerife for four weeks. He scoffed at our one week and said “That’s not enough!” After a while he said he had to go and left us to our lunch which was a Chicken Milanese for Scamp and Thai Chicken Curry for me. Service was slow at this restaurant too, but we weren’t in a hurry. When we left we passed the table over to another man, German this time. It’s a strange way to run a cafe.

We were walking back towards the hotel when we noticed the paraglider were all coming off the mountain and we turned round and found a place to watch them land. Some of the landings were a bit clumsy and some were downright scary. Then there were the tandems where the poor person in front had to bicycle his or her legs to keep from falling when they landed on the rough sand of the beach. £100 for a flight!

Back at the hotel, it was ’School Dinners Food’. Not one of their best days. But we did have our photos taken by the one of the hotel resident photographers who would have taken more photos today if we’d let her, than we had taken at our wedding, fifty years ago! We chose a small selection from the ones she took.

We listened to the worst singer ever in the Piano Bar. He was playing guitar and ‘singing’. However, it was when he attempted to ‘sing’ What A Wonderful World while mimicking Louis Armstrong. That was creepily awful and, that’s when we left. I think he went to the Billy Connolly school of music where he lampooned country and western singers. The difference was this bloke was serious. We played Rummikub in a different area of the piano bar.

We’re sitting on the balcony of the room now drinking G&Ts and reviewing the day.

My Fitbit says 17,900 steps, 8.05 miles, 153 floors.

 

5.05am wake up call – 16 February 2023

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Today it was a quick cup of tea and then off.

The bags were packed yesterday which only left a morning drive to Glasgow Airport and the usual nail biting passage through security, although this time an organised approach and copious amounts of Tesco’s finest clear resealable plastic bags made light work of getting through unscathed.

The usual overpriced breakfast in Frankie and Benny’s and it was almost time to fly through the air in an armchair in an aluminium tube for four hours, listening to three tubes in front of us on their way to a 60th party bash. Thankfully they weren’t going to our hotel.

After we landed we had the mile long walk through the labyrinth to be inspected by the polis and have our passport stamped then the interminable wait for bags before we walked out into the sunshine and the heat. Clever Scamp had organised a personal transfer to the hotel rather than sitting in a bus that took another hour or so to drop off passengers at their hotels. Been there, did that, didn’t enjoy it one little bit. Paying the extra was worth every penny. Our driver came from Cuba and was happy to recommend the best Salsa club to go to in Tenerife. He seemed a genuinely nice bloke and reminded me of the constable in Death in Paradise. Must have been the accent.
Booked in at the hotel, but our room wouldn’t be ready for another half and hour, so we had lunch and our first Holiday Beer.

Once we got rid of the cases and got changed into tee shirt and shorts we went for a walk in the sunshine. We walked down to the front and turned left past all the cafes and restaurants. It looked fairly familiar, although bits of it had changed and there was a lot of new accommodation everywhere. We walked for miles and I foolishly hadn’t brought a hat. A lesson learned.

After dinner we went to see what entertainment was available. We danced an embarrassingly bad salsa. Don’t drink and dance – it’s not a good image. We quickly decided to stick to soft drinks for a while and sobered up enough to dance much better, later. The girl singer was good and there were quite a few people dancing.

What they call ‘local spirits’ in the hotel are free to all inclusive guests , but are just not worth drinking. We agreed we’d buy a bottle for the room tomorrow.

PoD was a shot of Adeje, looking back from Puerto Colon.

Fairly early bed, after a long day.

No Games of Thrones – 6 August 2022

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Today was Dubrovnik whose ‘Old Town’ is famous as being the setting for Game of Thrones. I know it’s still really popular, but we watched the first episode and thought “Nah! Not for us”, and never returned.

After another late breakfast we walked off the ship and out into the more modern part of Dubrovnik. I had one task to complete and that was to buy a Dubrovnik tee shirt. Dubrovnik town is quite a pretty place in its own right. On our walk we found a Catholic(?) church with an old courtyard. Neither of us went in to the church. Across the busy road was a park that had been turned into an art display. All the seats had been painted in bright patterns and it looked like local children had painted posters and pinned them on trees. Next, at the end of the park was an interactive Science Park. All children centred and all interesting. Further along the road, Scamp found a fruit market and a smelly fish market she remembered from one of our first visits to Dubrovnik.

By then we’d reached the end of the road and turned right to keep the water on our right side. We found a park and in it was a naval gunboat the St Blaise. Allegedly “The first battleship of the Croatian Navy task force Dubrovnik. The symbol of resistance during the aggression of Serbia and Montengro on our town.” So say the Croatian Navy Veterans of Dubrovnik. Next an armoured vehicle, the Majsan used for the heroic defence of the City of Dubrovnik and its surrounding area during the homeland war. It’s an impressive lump of camouflaged steel and has what might or might not be the impressions made by enemy artillery on its side. Quite a strange collection of relics from a war that only happened about twenty years ago. It would seem that feelings are still a bit raw here. On a softer note, it seems the rear carrier of the vehicle is now home to a couple of stray cats!

We walked round the marina beside the park, then headed back to a cafe we’d passed earlier and had a beer there. From there it was an easy walk beside the harbour to the ship with the usual collections of catamarans, for-hire cabin cruisers and the now obligatory ‘pirate ship’, but nobody was hiring today. Scamp wanted to photograph some Agapanthus she’d seen earlier. She knew exactly where they were and the photos were taken along with some of Bougainvillea.

After lunch, Scamp went for a swim and I went for a walk down to the port under the high bridge where folk had been bungee jumping the last time we were here back in 2019 when the world was a totally different place. The bungee ropes were still in place and so was the jumping platform, but there were no jumpers today. I found a wee cottage with a lovely garden down by the port. I’m sure Scamp would have approved of the careful pruning of the flowers and bushes. I also found some scary looking cacti with big sharp looking spines, growing wild. I didn’t test their sharpness!

On the way back I stopped at the seamen’s bar (you have to be careful how you spell that!), had a beer and got the password for the wifi on the receipt. Managed to send a few messages back home and the beer was good too.

We found we’d a double booking for restaurants for tomorrow and chose to go with Sindhu, the Indian one. Managed to get the Glasshouse changed to Tuesday. Meant to go to a show, but cancelled and went dancing instead to more rapturous applause.

The PoD was a grab shot of Scamp walking past a chapel. The statue looked like a creepy lurker, I thought.

Another late night. Koper tomorrow.

A Sea Day – 5 August 2022

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Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.

Breakfast in Smash ’n’ Grab as the ship sailed round the heel of Italy and into the Adriatic. It was hot, early and although there were some sun beds, they were never in pairs. Always a free one, two being used, then another free one. Why do people do that? Eventually we found a couple together, but in the shade and right next to The Sports Hub, which was a man in a blue tee shirt sitting at a desk behind a rope. I don’t know if that rope was to protect him from angry sportsmen and women or the other way round. Whichever, the rope was virtually redundant as was the poor bloke in the blue tee shirt. It wasn’t the most interesting of views and I went looking for another sun bed.

I found one higher up and with a view overlooking one of the big pools. Lots of activity in the pool with kids running in and out of the water. Lots of them swimming, but not many adults. This was a kids area, but that was ok. We stayed there for a while before with a tremendous fanfare, the Sony logo burst onto the massive outdoor screen. It was a noisy version of Cinderella, apparently. We stayed to watch it for a while, but eventually gave up because we were at a very acute angle to the screen and the lip-sync was terrible. Maybe the lack of known faces in the film didn’t help. We left to get fed again, this time in The Peninsular Restaurant.

We got fixed up with a table, right at the back of the room and were given menus. We waited, and waited, and waited again, but nobody came near us to take our order or to offer us drinks. Only half the table had been set and there were no waiters at the station for this area. We agreed to give them 15minutes to sort things out and if we weren’t served in that time we’d walk out. That’s what happened. We walked out and handed back the menus saying they were no use to us as nobody had bothered to take our order. The waiter I handed the menu to started telling me I couldn’t do that, then the manager started to take control and said that he’d find us a table (I know condescension when I hear it) and he’d sort things out. After quite a lot of argument and raised voices, the manager realised that here were two angry customers who were going to take this further. He backed down and we left to go to Customer Services. I thought the customer was always right, but apparently it’s the staff who are always right now in P&O and you have to do what they say.

We did go straight to Customer Services which is just along the corridor and in direct sight of the manager. We only went to fix a dodgy key card, but the manager didn’t know that!

Back to Smash ’n’ Grab and really quite a decent lunch. After lunch we went to reclaim our sun beds which we’d marked as per the German method with towels and towel clips, only to find a family sitting on them. I quickly hoiked them out and we reclaimed our thrones. Then I though, this is just projected anger and these poor folk are getting the brunt of my anger at the Peninsular manager. We took our towels, I said sorry, and we went to have a quick splash in the pool at the front of the ship.

It was just a quick splash, because it’s a small pool, with a stated capacity for 12 people. There were 23 in it, including us. We left to have a couple of beers and found another pair of sun beds.

Posh dinner tonight. Formal dress and Black Tie. Food was just ok tonight. It was so remarkable, I can’t remember what I had. Then we booked a table at The Glass House for Sunday. It’s quite expensive, but hopefully it’ll be worth it. After that we had a drink (Strawberry Daiquiri for Scamp and Laphroaig for me). Then we went dancing.

We had a great time. Ballroom, Sequence and Latin, we danced them all. We even did a solo Salsa spot and we got a cheer for one of the more difficult moves. I was impressed. If we hadn’t been the only couple on the floor, I’d have been sure the applause was for someone else. Eventually just before 11.30pm when the dancing finishes, we finished.  PoD was a photo of the locked area at the rear of our deck where the Covid patients are kept, away from the rest of us.  It’s rumoured they are chained to their oars in there, like galley slaves, and have to row day and night to keep the ship on its course!

Like I said at the start of this blog:
Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.

Off to bed, ready for Dubrovnik tomorrow.

We shall go to the ball – 11 June 2022

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And the balcony too!

Scamp was on the computer first thing this morning. Her flying fingers quickly netted us a week (hopefully) in the sun, sailing round the Adriatic again. What a clever girl she is. I know I couldn’t have done that in such a short time. A wee while to wait, but that’s sometimes a good thing. No rush, and time to look forward to the experience.

With the technical and financial details completed, we sat back and dug deep into our memories of strange sounding names of places far away. We did notice the rain falling, but felt obliged to ignore it, because it looks like we’ll be going abroad this year after a long wait.

Ah, but back to reality. It was raining. The wind was blowing a hoolie, and we didn’t have anything planned for dinner. Scamp had hung some washing out to dry (or blow away) and we walked down to the shops to get some chicken for the dinner which would be Butter Chicken from an easy cook-in sauce mix. Back home we had judged it perfectly, because within half an hour it was bucketing with rain. We got the clothes in just before the rain started. Then Scamp made the marinade for the chicken and started ironing while I made some flat bread for the dinner. After that I made myself scarce and took the Sony A7 with the big macro lens to St Mo’s to annoy some insects.

Found a bit fat spider on a thistle and a lot of little flies on grass flowers, then got PoD, a plantain, not a Caribbean plantain, but a little weed you see every day, but don’t realise is a wild flower. I also found a wild orchid. Not as pretty perhaps as the ones we saw on Skye, but nicely detailed. Both are on Flickr.

Watched Maleficent which we both thought we’d seen before, but agreed we hadn’t after the first fifteen minutes. It might have been Maleficent2 or 3 or however many there have been. Anyway, it filled in an hour and a half of innocent fun with a few ‘funnies’ thrown in to lighten the dark gloom of the story.

The Butter Chicken was disappointing, we both agreed. No real flavour in the chicken sauce, despite being marinaded. Not a kit we’d use again. The flatbreads too, fell rather flat. ‘Could do better’ was the comment from both of us.

Well done to Scamp this morning for knowing when and how much to push!

No plans for tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a less windy and drier day.