An island belonging to Spain

This is part two of my holiday in Playa del Inglés. It’s in Gran Canaria. An island that belongs to Spain. I looked on Google Map where it is. It’s more close to Western Sahara than Spain. The island is in the middle of the Atlantic ocean which you can see on the photo above. We arrived there on Thursday, March 28. To Las Palmas where the airport is, to be exact. It took about 30 minutes by bus to Playa del Inglés. The ride was organised by the Finnish travel agency, Aurinkomatkat (trans. Sun travels)

When we came to the destination, the bus circled around the narrow streets to the hotels. I don’t know how many we stopped by because it felt like ages before our hotel. But when we did, it was such a relief after a long trip. We got our room with a balcony and what a view it was. You could see the whole town from there. Below there were swimming pools and sun chairs.

Before dinner, we went to the store to buy water and other things. You shouldn’t drink the tap water because you don’t want to get stomach problems. You should even brush your teeth with it to make sure. The dinner was at 6.30 pm but dad thought it was too early to go. Luckily I ate a sandwich before we left home. In the hotel, there was a bar and outside that, there was a popcorn machine. It had two flavours. Since I don’t speak Spanish, I didn’t know what they were. There were ‘dulce’ and ‘salada’ so I picked dulce. It was, of course, a bad choice. I didn’t know then it meant sweet. It wasn’t, it tasted awful. I’ve never eaten popcorn like that before and I hope I never will. I tried to eat it all but I couldn’t so I put in the bin. I had to eat something because I was feeling peckish.

Speaking of culture shock in food. At dinner, you had to pay for the water separately. I was appalled. Dad had paid for the food in advantage and yet you have to pay for the drinks. I have never experienced that anywhere else. Every dinner you had to pay for the beverages but you get used to it, I guess. A few evenings I didn’t drink anything because I didn’t want to say aqua all the time. They spoke English though so later it got easier. The food was good though and it felt like you ate a lot. The first breakfast the coffee was from a machine and it tasted awful. But then I saw normal coffee where you could put milk in yourself. My mornings were saved. Without coffee, the days would have been a bit different.

The first days of the holiday, I found it really boring. There was nothing to do. The hotel had a stage where had different programs but that doesn’t help my boredom. There were a lot of Germans and a lot of them smoked. You couldn’t sit outside at all because of the smell. I was surprised by how many smokers there are on Gran Canaria. Even the employers, guides, bus drivers etc. Are they born with a cigarette in their mouth or what? It was really annoying. At least they didn’t smoke inside. Hail smoking laws. In a hotel, you can get away but when there are smokers in a small place, you can’t escape far. I get to that in the next post. If we didn’t have plans this holiday would have been the worse ever. People mostly were there to get some colour on their bodies but neither of us like that sun that much. I’m definitely not a beach holiday person. I prefer city holidays.

My parents had been on this island in the 1990s and they went on a sailboat trip. We would go on this same trip. The problems were how to get in touch with the Finnish guide. There was a phone number you could call but when we tried, it went to Helsinki. There they couldn’t help at all. We asked the reception and they gave us a few numbers. None of them worked either. So what to do? There was a folder in the hotel so we looked there for information. The guide could be found in another hotel on Saturday. I asked the reception where it was and it was only a block away. Then finally we could book us a trip. It was on Sunday. The bus ride would pick us up from the hotel. What we learned from this experience is, always pay trips in advance and you don’t need to find the guide like a needle in a haystack. So a bit of dazzle at the beginning of this trip on the island.

To be continued…