We left Santiago de Compostela on Saturday morning and flew to Tenerife. Prior to dating J, I’d never heard of this place. It’s off the coast of West Africa, but it’s part of Spain. There are tons of tourists from Holland, the UK, France, Germany, but not from the US. I don’t think we even saw another American while we were there. People didn’t even guess that we were American and instead, they asked if we were from Iceland. It was funny and I loved it.

It was my second time in Tenerife and J’s fourth, but we’d never gone in December, which I think may be during the high season. Last time we came, it was March or April and there were not as many people. I would probably compare Tenerife to Florida or Cancun. There were a lot of older people (I would say the average age was probably 80), and it appeared as if no one had heard about skin cancer or didn’t give a sh*t anymore because EVERYONE was baking themselves in the sun. It was beautiful, though, so I can’t really blame them.

We changed our travel plans and ended up Tenerife a day earlier than originally planned. We decided to stay in a different hotel for the extra night just to check it out. Good decision on our part! We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton and we were upgraded to a suite (thanks J for having a million airline miles!). This was the view from our room:

This was the adults only pool, we stayed there all day (under an umbrella!).

It was gorgeous. The hotel was nice and expensive, but there were a lot of kids around. You could stay away from them, but there’s a buffet breakfast in the morning and I don’t like seeing kids that early it seemed like they were everywhere. No thanks.

After spending a night and an entire day there, we went to a different, adults-only hotel called Tigotan Lovers & Friends. The name cracks me up every time and grosses me out. It’s the one J normally stays at and I’ve been to it before. It’s all-inclusive and it kind of looks like a cruise ship, too.

One of the nights, a cover band performed in front of the pool. I watched from the balcony of our room and it was so fun! A lot of people were on their balconies singing and dancing along. There is also a rooftop pool with a view of the ocean:

Unfortunately, the first night we were there one of us got sick. Like really sick. Like I have PTSD from it. I’m not going to name names, but it wasn’t me. That kind of put a damper on the whole situation. Everyone is fine now, but we didn’t really do anything the entire week we were there, which was actually pretty nice…except that J didn’t really feel 100%. Just about the only thing we did was take a couple of walks each day.

One of the things I love about Tenerife is that there is a boardwalk along the water that goes forever. We never got to the end and the views were incredible.

We also saw some interesting sand art:

There are a lot of restaurants on the water and we went to one a couple of days where we could sit in the shade and watch the surfers!

Obviously, this was something I loved. I didn’t feel like joining in, though, because the beach was pretty rocky and everyone was wearing wet suits. I’d rather wait until I’m back on the warm, sandy beaches of Costa Rica.

So that’s about it for my trip to Spain! We spent a week in Tenerife doing practically nothing, enjoying the incredible weather, and then I flew back to Portland last weekend. All-in-all, it was a great trip. There were a few hiccups along the way, but the weather couldn’t have been better and now that it’s pouring down rain here (there’s a flood warning), I’m so happy I had a lot of time to enjoy it.