Last minute getaway

We had just sold our house and the place we were hoping to rent had unfortunately fallen through at the last minute. We were sat in a cabin we were renting for a night trying to decide what to do, where to go, for how long and all that when my husband turned to me and said ‘Why not go abroad? All our things are in storage for now anyway so why not?’ That was a very good point, so now, where to go!

I started off looking at cheap winter holidays online as we really didn’t know where to go then Tim said, ‘what about Tenerife’? If I’m honest, I didn’t really know much about Tenerife other than it was known as a bit of a party place for a mixture of ages and honestly, not somewhere I really wanted to go. All I could picture was drunk British people, and it just didn’t appeal to me. Having said that I did start googling it to see if it was better than I thought and it did have some nice places and views, so maybe I should try?

I was searching for somewhere to stay for about 5 nights, and I couldn’t find any hotels I liked or apartments as they all seemed to be complexes and I didn’t want that. Not entirely sure why, I think I just thought it wouldn’t be private enough. I would say I was being a bit of a snob at this point, but I didn’t want to be around young, or old drunk (British) people and I knew this was a favourite place they liked to go. An hour or so later my husband showed me place he had found in Playa de las Americas, the apartment looked nice and it had a balcony so seemed like a good choice. It was in a complex though! Anyway, fast forward and our flights and accommodation were booked for the next afternoon.

We arrived in Tenerife and got a taxi to our apartment for the next few days. The entrance to the complex was in-between a shop and a Chinese restaurant, my first thoughts were literally ‘Oh shit! What have we booked’, but you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. As you went through the entrance you were met but the pool and apartments and actually, it didn’t look as bad as I had thought it would. The apartments were all white, and the pool was blue so really, it was nice. Our apartment was close to a little café inside the complex and you could hear and see people from the balcony, but you did still have privacy and there really wasn’t much noise going on there, not even from the road to the left of us.

We dropped our things in the apartment and decided to head out to explore a little and get some dinner from a restaurant we saw online the night before. We went right a couple of times when we exited the complex and this took us towards the beach which was about a 10 minute walk. We found the restaurant we saw online but honestly the look from the outside you really couldn’t tell if it was open/closed or a restaurant or strip club! We chose to skip this place and started walking around for another restaurant. We found one and stopped to eat gluten free smash burgers and I must say, they were really good and I would recommend them. It was a place called Dedo’s and the atmosphere was buzzing with nightlife and music from different pubs and clubs around, but no one was completely drunk or making fools of themselves. This was definitely not what I was expecting but I was loving it.

The next day was Halloween which is usually cold and cloudy back home but here the sun was shining, and it was warm, I mean shorts and top weather and not winter clothes. We needed to go to a supermarket as we had nothing in the apartment and choose to go to the nearest Mercadona near us (we love these supermarkets in Spain). This meant crossing the road from the apartment and going inland, away from the beach and I must say, what we saw we didn’t expect. Going this way took you away from all the hustle and bustle and it felt so Spanish and surreal.

The market as always had everything we needed and at reasonable prices and was only about a 10 minute walk from the apartment, what more could you ask for! We took our shopping back to the apartment and decided to head out and see more of Tenerife. We went back the way towards the supermarket as we found a gluten free restaurant that we could get some lunch at. Unfortunately they were about half an hour from closing and we told they wouldn’t be serving now so we had to look elsewhere. We carried on walking and before we knew it, we were at a shopping centre called Siam. We had lunch at one of the many restaurants here on the roof terrace which was very good and then we did a little shopping in one of my favourite shops, Lefties! This I guess would be similar to our Primark. After this we walked back to our apartment via the Estadio Antonio Dominguez Alfonso stadium.

On our way back we noticed a concert happening just across the road from our apartment this night, a Colombian singer called Manual Turizo. We could see the stage getting ready, hear music playing and the see a lot of people queuing, waiting to get through to the stage area. We had already decided that we would be going out for dinner again this night and thought, why not check out the shopping area first. We walked around the shopping district here which is very big, and it had so many people there (you will definitely get you your steps)! With it being Halloween, most of the kids were all dressed up and had face paint on which added to the experience. We didn’t really see any restaurants that we wanted to go to here though, so we headed back to Debos and this time trying their meat platter, which was good and loaded but if I’m honest, I did prefer the burger the night before.

Walking back to the apartment it was good to see that the pubs and restaurants all seemed to participate in the Halloween theme too. When we got back the concert was in full swing and what we did hear sounded really good and it was a nice surprise to have on your doorstep. The concert finished around midnight and people then headed off for the rest of their Friday Halloween night leaving the area quiet as if nothing had just taken place! With it now all quite and us full and resting, we just had one more thing to do, what are we going to do tomorrow?