Traveling: Tenerife

Saturday, 18 September 2010

Tenerife 2006 - Part 1

Hotel and Santa Cruz

In the summer of 2006 my girlfriend and I decided to go to Tenerife. We just wanted to relax a bit after an exhausting school year and what is better than lying on a beach and enjoying the sun? We have already been to Gran Canaria, but this time we wanted to try another Canary Island. That's why we chose Tenerife.

Our Hotel

We stayed in a hotel at Playa de Fanabe called Castalia Park. It was okay, but nothing special. Since we spent most of the time at the beach, it was fine. It offered a pool, a restaurant and a bar.

Hotel Castalia Park

Reception

Hotel Castalia Park Buffet

Hotel Castalia Park Restaurant

Usually we are not the biggest fans of All Inclusive or Half-Board-Plans, because we like to try local restaurants to eat their specialities and not the hotel food we can get everywhere. But it was such a good offer and so we ended up with having a breakfast and dinner buffet every day.

The beach near the hotel was wonderful, although I had to get used to the black volcano sand.

On the way to the Beach

Playa De Fanabe

We did several trips during our time there. For example we visited Tenerife's capital city Santa Cruz and Loro Parque, but more about Loro Parque in the next part.

Santa Cruz

There was is public transport on the island and one bus was going to Santa Cruz. Since we didn't want to spend our whole time at the beach, we did a day trip to the city. We left in the morning and did some sightseeing. Santa Cruz is a beautiful city and it is definately worth to see it. Since we didn't plan to see anything, we just walked around the town and did some shopping at El Corte Ingles.

Santa Cruz

Friday, 17 September 2010

Tenerife 2006 - Part 2

Loro Parque and Other Stuff

Our hotel offered several tours around Tenerife and one was to Loro Parque, the famous zoo. We booked a tour and on the next day we were on the way to this wonderful park. After an one hour drive we arrived there, bought our tickets and discovered the zoo. Back then I didn't think that huge animals, like whales and dolphins shouldn't be kept in small aquariums just to entertain people.

Loro Parque

Loro Parque is a very beautiful park and features many different animals, like penguins, dolphins, whales, gorillas and of course parrots. Loro is the Spanish word for parrot and the whole park started with breeding parrots. The entrance is themed to a Thai village, which looked great.

Loro Parque

To be honest I really liked the shows with the dolphins and whales, because I've never seen these majestic animals in real life before. Nevertheless my favorites were the penguins. The highlight of this trip was the baby dolphin that we saw during a backstage tour. As mentioned before, today I wouldn't visit such a park anymore, but at least I got the impression that the people working there care about the animals.

Loro Parque

Claudia and I spent some evenings at Playa De Las Americas, because there were some cool bars and restaurants. And the other days we went to bars and restaurants near our hotel. One of our favourite areas was Playa Del Duque, because of the new shopping center and bars.