Everything Splendid: Canary Islands. Part 1: Las Palmas

WAY too long to squeeze into just one post, so I'm splitting it up via the two cities we spent time in: Las Palmas and Maspalomas.

LAS PALMAS

(view from the south end of Las Canteras)

After over a month of traveling, my California girl is starting to show through. I miss ocean. A lot. So when my friend Jordan asked if I wanted to go to the Canary Islands with him and our friend Jonathan, I signed up immediately. Ocean? Beach? Palm trees? Umm...YES!!!

We left Friday morning, off to a bumpy start and nearly missed our flight, (note: we went with RyanAir. Never again. Total scam, awful pilots, and they charge you for food and drinks that they walk by you with at least once every 30 minutes! Oh, and your purse has to fit in your carry-on or the charge is 50 pounds!) but when we landed and realized that we were in Africa it was all worth it.

We took a bus to Las Palmas, a city on the north side of the island, right where it bottlenecks so thin you can stand in the middle and see ocean in both directions. It's actually their low season for tourists, so the area felt very local which was nice. We stayed at Hostel Albanico 7 Soles on La Naval, only a few blocks from Las Canteras, a three mile long, sandy beach. The hostel was really quite nice (the proprietor was a funny little man in a pale yellow polo with gray hair and lazy eye who made fun of Jonathan for not speaking Spanish. He was really a great guy and we had everything we needed including free wifi and a printer) and the beach was beautiful in a semi-overcast, Afrospana way.

(Street from our hostel to the beach)

(Las Palmas - these pics were taken from a raised, cement park. The only green was a few bits of grass in raised cement boxes. Kind of odd...)

We spent the first few hours restaurant hopping. First, Mediterranean food on the main stretch by the beach (best falafal of my life!!!!! - maybe that's because I hadn't eaten in 11 hours, but still, it was GOOD) then hot chocolate and crepes from an ice cream place owned by a flamboyant little man who said his name was Nicolas (this was weird. I ordered hot chocolate and he gave me a Styrofoam cup of hot milk, two little cookies, a packet of sugar, and a packet of "colacao" for me to make myself! It tasted really good though), and finally sangria and a chimichanga for Jordan at an actual Mexican place on La Naval right off the beach. I was quite impressed by the Mexican place - the decor was actually pretty authentic. The only problem was that the menu was translated into British English which definitely didn't work. Apparently in Brit-speak tortillas are "omeletts."

By the time we were done eating it was well past 11pm and time to go find a club! Jonathan and I headed down to the area around la Plaza de Espana where Google said all the good clubs were. After trotting down heavily graffitied streets (graffiti seems to be everywhere in Las Palmas) and a few cute plazas we found ourselves on a street packed with young people and four clubs right next to each other. We headed for the Heineken bar because it seemed the most crowded. Five euros got us in plus two drinks! Probably the best deal in Europe. Wait. No, it's Africa so I don't know. The demographic was a lot younger than I'd expected. None of the creepy 40 year olds; this club/bar's demographic looked 16-22! Everyone was drinking these random mixed drinks I'd never seen before and of course there's not a menu at a place like this so I just asked I guy at the bar (en espanol of course) what the glowing purple and blue concoction was in front of him. He said it was called a "de fuerto" so I asked for one of those. No idea what was in it, but there were 6 different liquids and it was really sweet. I was down for dancing all night, but Jonathan didn't speak any Spanish really and wanted call it a night. After a quick stop by the beach to satisfy my ocean craving, we headed back to the hostel.

(Las Canteras at night - the beach is lit til at least 1 or 2 in the morning! You'll see families playing volleyball past 11pm even in a drizzle.)

Jordan and I got up early the next morning to catch the beach quiet and empty save for a gang of older men and their sailboating passions. The locals spent their Saturday tinkering with everything from full-sized boats to one-person row boats to remote control sailboats like in New York's Central Park. After breakfast at a little cafe (La Oliva I think...note, it opens at 8:30, at least an hour earlier than anywhere else on the beach), we walked the 3 miles to the south end of Las Canteras and just soaked it all in. It was a beautiful, quiet morning. By noon the beach had filled up, and I'd bought a bathing suit and grabbed lunch at a local hole in the wall. Fantastic. Sun, swimming, we couldn't get enough. Until 4pm of course, when we decided on the spur of the moment to jump on a bus to the other side of the island to visit the dunes of Maspalomas.