We have a nice long weekend in Lanzarote planned for the coming weekend. I am very curious to visit this island, because a very big part of it exists of volcanic ground. We will leave on Friday and stay in Lanzarote until Monday. There are a number of nice sites we would like to visit:
When we’re back I’ll post some images and a little report about our visit.
In Las Palmas the carnival is celebrated in a lot of ways. Parades, costumes, parties, lots of drinking, shows, fireworks, burning sardines and a powder party. During the powder party (in honor of the original inhabitants of the island) everyone is dresses in all white and equipped with a few cans of powder.
The idea is that you walk through the shopping street Triana from the beginning to the end. There is a band playing music, and the people simply follow the band. It takes around three hours to move to the end and meanwhile you are in the middle of one huge partying mass inside an even bigger white cloud of powder. Very nice!
A harbour is a place where you really dont want to get lost. Strange types are walking around and there is a risk that heavy things might fall on you.
Even as a child we are taught by Popeye that there are always bad guys in the neighborhood of sailors. In Las Palmas it is the same as everywhere else. Rules don’t apply and even the roads don’t follow the normal rules but just run chaotically through all the cargo.
Two year ago more or less around the same time of year I wrote a little entry on this blog about some really bad weather in Las Palmas. That was two years ago, and today I am living a big dejavu. It’s raining big-time again! This morning the streets turned to little rivers and right now in the evening the same is happening again. Nice big drops of rain, just like in Holland.
We had a great time visiting La Palma. In three days time we saw really a lot. The first day we were waling for 6 hours through the forests. The second day we conquered the top of the island and on day three we climbed a (cold) volcano.
The nicest thing I did was one one night when we went searching for snails. This is a Spanish way of saying you are going for a walk, in the middle of the night, with beer, a flashlight and everything else you might need. During this walk we were really searching for snails, although the reason why we were searching for them remained unclear. I think it might be just for the honor of discovering a snail in the dark.
After walking around for a while we discovered a big tree that was beckoning us to investigate. It was a huge avocado tree, full of big avocado’s. Jummie jummie! We relieved the tree from a lot of big avocado’s and after some time it became clear that in my enthusiasm I had squashed all the nearby snails. Oh well.
This weekend we will again be visiting one of the Canary islands. This time we visit La Palma. The locals call the island ‘La bonita’, which means the pretty, so it promises to be a nice island. La Palma is a much greener island compared to Gran Canaria, so there will be lots of forest, but also caves and volcanoes. I am quite curious.
If you are interested this is our itinerary (a PDF). To be able to view the PDF you will need the following information/skills:
We have already visited Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Fuerteventura and after this weekend also La Palma. What remains are the islands Lanzarote, El Hierro and La Gomera.
It took quite a while, but now you can finally view some of the pictures from our holiday and tour through Scotland.
We enjoyed our visit to Scotland a lot. We saw a lot of castles, very nice nature, a few hairy cows, little postcard towns, people playing bagpipes, etc.
We also learned a few things. Clearly there is a need to check your bill before paying in any restaurant or bar. The last few days of our vacation we started to check every bill we got, because my partner was fed up with the errors that we had noticed. Our check lasted a few days and resulted in 80% wrong bills which in every case had a few euros to much. The bills were never to low. After informing there was always some error that had been made without intent, but it happened so much it was obvious something was going on.
A lot of years ago (I think I was 6 or 7 years old at the time) I visited agualand again. Agualand is a waterpark on the south of the island. I somehow remember it was a nice park, but it was a lot smaller then I remembered. I think all the attractions were exactly the same as almost 30 years ago. The only thing I did not remember from my previous visit as a little boy were the burning hot stones you needed to walk across to get to the slides. Also the park closes very early. Around 6 o clock the visitors were asked to leave the park.
It was a nice visit and I was happy I brought some sunscreen factor 50, because there was very little shadow in the park. The entrance fee was quite high, 20 euros if you provide a discount ticket worth 6 euros. These discount tickets you can get everywhere, for example in a lot of supermarkets. The part is fun and it is worth a visit. Be sure to bring flip flops that can get wet! You need these to walk to the slides and not burn your feet.
Our planned vacation time is coming closer and closer and this your we are sticking to Europe. Our plan is to pass by Spain and Holland for a few days each and then on the 30th continue to Edinburgh, Scotland. In Scotland we plan to explore the country in about a week. Just to get a feel of things. Of course we’ll stop by Lock Ness and see if we are lucky and catch a glimpse of the ancient monster.
After Scotland we return to Holland where Ana will stay only a few days and I will stat a little over a week. Enough time to catch up and visit friends and family.
Our planning:
26 June Las Palmas -> Madrid
29 June Madrid -> Amsterdam
30 June Amsterdam -> Edinburgh
8 July Edinburgh -> Amsterdam
19 July Amsterdam -> Madrid
19 July Madrid -> Las Palmas
After our visit to Egypt we visited the Pyrenees during a nice trip by car. From the Spanish side we drove over to the south of France and after visiting a number of sites we returned to Spain. Our trip took us past towns like San Sebastian, Pau, Lourdes (yes!), Gavarnie and Bayonne.
The food in France was absolutely delicious. We visited very typical France restaurants with very good food and equally good wine. We saw a lot of nature and made long hikes the the wild, enjoying nature at its best. In Lourdes I got quite a lot of water (you never know) and afterwards we visited the snow. A lot of pictures of this trip can be found in my Spain/France album.