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Canary Islands - Tenerife, November 14, 2007
| As we sailed into Tenerife (remember to pronounce the final "e"), the dominant object is their new auditorium. The bus exit from the harbor goes right next to it and everybody on the bus said "looks like the architect knew Sydney!" |
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They took us by bus to the old capital of Tenerife - the village of La
Laguna. The architecture here is a mixture of several vintages.
The village is in a mountain valley and the mountain walls were part of the defense. Nelson tried to conquer the town after Trafalgar but gave it up as undoable. As time went on they moved the capital to Santa Cruz (the harbor) since the island was no longer being attacked at regular intervals! |
| We walked about 10 minutes from the square where the bus could stop to this church. It seems that Tenerife was an important stop returning from Mexico and a portion of the silver brought back was given "to God" on arrival. |
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As you can see, there's quite a collection of silver on this Altar. Collecting silver in Mexico must have been a very successful business! |
| The side chapel was decorated with paintings on the wall and some poetry (not shown in this photo). One of our friends commented that the paintings were pretty "black" and I don't think he was referring to the color of the paint. |
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Most of the rest of the morning was "free time". We found a pastry shop and enjoyed that, then wandered around. The wooden balconies are often present, some of them probably original. As you can see, the apartments are kept well painted. |
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The afternoon tour was 2 hours of bus ride, 1 hour of looking and 2
hours of bus ride. About 60% or more of the boat (including us)
elected not to do that. After creating some more web pages Marnie and I walked to this church (the church of the Immaculate Conception). I'd taken this photo from the bus on the way back to the ship for lunch. |
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The building dates from the 1500s, and when you get close it looks like it. Unfortunately they close the insides at noon so we couldn't see the part they do carefully maintain. |
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Some of the buildings downtown have been very interestingly painted.
There are no real windows in this wall, nor a balcony, but this looks so much
better than a blank wall. We found a nice bistro up the street from here, sat in the shade and enjoyed a beer and cola, then went back to the boat and packed for our trip home. |
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Since some on the tour had to leave the boat at 4AM to make their 7AM flights we left Tenerife about 6:30PM to go to the Grand Canary Island. Here's a shot of the harbor as we were leaving that I enjoyed. |
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Las Palmas, the harbor for Grand Canary Island is a large, busy harbor.
The lighthouse on the end of the pier is now shown on the web site.
We were parked right next to the cruise dock and as we were packing,
the Gem of Norway came next to us (3000 passengers). Needless to
say, standing on our top deck you still had to crane your neck to see
their promenade deck to say nothing of the top deck. This will end my story. We flew back to Madrid, spent the night, got a taxi to the airport, and this page is being composed on the plane. |
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