Blog: Feliz Navidad!

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Myself and The Baubles On My Tree went off for some SUMMER SUN just before Christmas, and let me tell you this: it was GRATE!

We went to sunny TENERIFE, where it was weirdly like SUMMER but also CHRISTMASSY. It was most odd to be wandering round in shorts and sandles while Shakin' Stevens sang in the background, but being strong-willed and determined we somehow managed to get by. The people of Tenerife have some particular tastes in Christmas decorations - they like Poinsettia, Reindeer made from fairy lights, gigantic wireframe presents you can walk inside, and especially nativity scenes. Man ALIVE but there were a lot of nativity scenes - our hotel alone had TWO, and we saw an INCREDIBLE one when we went on our (one and only) day trip to La Laguna. The Tourist Information centre there had an entire ROOM full of a model village version of Bethlehem which told the entire bible story as you walked around it. It was brilliant, also quite surprising as I found myself squealing "Ooh, it's Herod!" There was also a life-size scene in the courtyard of the building, which had The Baby Jesus missing. It wasn't Christmas yet though, so maybe he would be there for his birthday?

Another thing they like in Tenerife is FOOD LABELLING, which was extremely helpful, and also VEGANISM. There were LOADS of places to eat, though we spent the majority of our lunchtimes popping to a place called Malaika, a totally vegan cafe in Puerto de la Cruz, and then going to a healthfood shop on the way back to the bar... sorry, apartment... which sold Violife CREAM CHEESE, which I'd not seen before. I'm not quite sure WHY there was so much Ethical Eating going on, but we were very glad for it. We also, very ethically, drank as much LOCAL BEER as we could. We were ethical every day, sometimes several times over!

One of the other highlights of the week was the Lago Martianez, an enormous LIDO down by the seaside, where we spent a very ethical afternoon eating locally sourced foods ("chips", I think they call them) and LOLLING ABOUT on sunbeds. There was an EXTREMELY cold saltwater pool which The Salt In My Brine spent about 20 minutes longer in than me (so about 22 minutes), and I had a PROPER KIP in the sunshine. It was ACE!

Towards the end of the holiday news started to drip through about the drones at Gatwick, where we were due to fly back to. We hoped it would all be sorted out by the time it was our turn to go, but amazingly, given that Chris Grayling was exerting all his mental powers on solving the problem, the airport was still closed the night before we were due to set off. The Times On My Timetable spent a lot of time texting and emailing people to try and find out what was going on, and rather brilliantly got our check-out time delayed so we had more time to pack. In the end our bus pick-up was put back from about 1pm to 6.30pm, giving us an extra afternoon to be ETHICAL in the cafe and the poolside bar.

Then it took AGES to get to the airport via a traffic jam, during which the mostly British passengers told each other what we'd heard, followed by a SCARE at the check-in desk, where we went to get a much needed PINT and returned 20 minutes later to find that the desk had CLOSED! Luckily for us the chap from Norwegian Airways, the ONLY person in the check-in lounge, sorted us out, but it was a bit scary!

The rest of the journey was FINE, and we ended up getting home just after 6am, which meant it was the first time in about a DECADE that I'd stayed awake for 24 hours. We was KNACKERED, but very happy with a BRILLO holiday. I would heartily recommend a bit of WINTER SUN!

posted 2/1/2019 by MJ Hibbett

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