Isle of Tenerife – Blog

Dreaming about my next escape

I wish it could be summer again. If I look out of the window, the winter blues is getting me, and I start dreaming of my next escape to sunny Egypt or Tenerife, maybe a summer trip to New Zealand, at least a shopping trip to Mailand or New York.

But browsing through the hotel-reservation sites to find that perfect hotel or the best hostel-deal in the destination of my dreams usually ends all these positive feelings – it is just a drag to have to enter your specifications over and over again, getting the same sponsored results that would never be my first choice, and then the search for more information, how many more clicks could there possibly be.

With HostelWorld.com I finally found my site – all the property types from Hotels to Campsites, videos and podcasts, free pocket guides and my own travel community, all the info and services I need for all those destinations worldwide, and everything just a click away. And what better place to dream about that next escape while being on the train on my way to work with those grey winter clouds – now they even have the HostelWorld-App.

Great!

On Tenerife you can find lots of restaurants, taverns and so called “Guachinches” distributed all over the isle. The Guachinche restaurants are typical for the canary isles and here you are served typical canarian dishes and specialties from the region.

The ambience in the guachinche is something really special. Normally those kinds of restaurants are established in garages or old canarian houses. It happened often to me that I wanted to visit a guachinche and didn’t have any idea where to find one. As well as if you live for a longer time on the isle you don’t know even the half of the guachinches and typical restaurants existing here.

Now there is a site, on which you can get wonderful insider tips about guachinches, restaurants and taverns. The site is called “De Picoteo por Tenerife”, which means something like gourmandizing all around Tenerife. Every month good insider tips about harmonic places to enjoy real canarian food are published.

The publications are a sort of field report. Those reports are accompanied with photos. Like this you can get yourself an idea about the ambience and the kind of dishes served. Watching the photos you get real appetite to taste the specialties and visit those places.

On the site it’s mentioned where the restaurants are situated and when they are opened. As well you get information about the kind of dishes and specialties offered. If there are some special events and offers the site is informing you about that. For example when there are special invitations for chestnuts ore suckling pigs in autumn.

If you want to know the canarian gastronomy, you can visit the page “De Picoteo por Tenerife” and get a good insider tip.

Here you are the direction of the webpage (Spanish):
http://www.depicoteoportenerife.com

Two years ago I’ve been on the most populous island of the Canary Islands, Tenerife. I lived in a fancy finca in the country for one week and I rented a car, of course, to see all the highlights of this volcanic island.

First of all I visited the Mt. Teide, the highest mountain in Spain. You can ride a cable-car to the summit. And I had an unrivalled view on the lunar-like landscape. You can see all the colours of different types of rock, orange, green, rust, black and beige.

For good photographers a must, to eternalise this fascinating view in pictures. I’m not a good photographer, so I tried to put these colours in my mind for ever.
And, believe it or not, on this bald peak I found vegetation. It was a kind of daisy flower, growing in bushy clumps, very cute.

I drove around, visited all the traditional rural towns and hillside villages, but for fun you should go out in Puerto de la Cruz. It’s said to be better for the older people, like I am, and it exceeded all my expectations. It was a quiet, cool space, that’s what people told me. And there were right! I had a relaxing evening there.

The northern coast was bordered by steep cliffs, but the southern part was for the tourists. It was not because this part was hotter, but rather the infrastructures were more developed. The beaches, made of black volcanic sand, were gorgeous and the ocean was wild and refreshing.

I walked along the ocean and sometimes I was completely alone. Wonderful! If you ever plan an unforgettable vacation, you should go there.

The largest of the seven Canary Islands is Tenerife. About 43% of the Canarian inhabitants live there, and among tourists Tenerife is the most popular of the Canaries.

In February 1999 my friends and I decided to book flights to Tenerife as we wanted to spend a great time at the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Before the trip we had created extraordinary costumes for our participation in that special event. We really enjoyed having parties in the streets, dancing to music of Caribbean rhythms, drinking Sangría and meeting people from anywhere. There were many interesting bands and orchestras playing in the streets. The atmosphere was just brilliant! I guess you can imagine we did not sleep too much. My personal highlight was DJ Armand Van Helden´s performance at the Santa Cruz Dance Carnival on Monday of Carnival.

Tenerife is a fantastic vacation place for nightlife in general. We liked the evening programs in our hotel in Playa de las Americas a lot. In the week after Carnival there was a karaoke show for everyone, and me and my friends sang a song which was originally recorded by the Spice Girls.

Playa de las Americas is the perfect location for going out. We spend a lot of time during the nights in the clubs. My favourite one was Tramps, the most popular night club of the island. I admit it was not cheap at all. However, some of our Canarian friends knew one of the guys working there, and so we got entrance and at least a few drinks for free. One night we were not into dancing that much, so we decided to spend some time at Brannigans, a small pub where the DJ played Indie music most of the time.

If you still look for a place where to spend your next party vacation, do not hesitate and a book a flight to Tenerife – it is a real nightlife paradise.

The last time I was visiting the Canary Islands I prefered to stay on Tenerife which is one of the the most beautiful islands in this area. I don’t wanna be like the other tourists, so I decided with my family to stay in a private apartemant instead of an hotel room so we can do the whole day what we want.

The most impressive in the time on Tenerife was beside the really good and wonderful conditions for swimming that the nature all around this place is so asthonishing and perfect that we were every day on a few places just to watch them. That Tenerife can present this wonderful landscape depends on their origin out of volcano activities.

The good thing about it is that the poeple on the canary islands know this and save it for tourists and themselves. Between my stay on tenerife I decided to visit some protected natural areas because nearly half of the island ist such an territory.

The best beside the „Parque Nacional del Teide“ was Anaga and Teno which are two rural parks where you can get lots of good photograph images. Also I must give the advice to watch out for the Tenerife bugloss or the Canary Islands Dragon Tree which are plants you can’t see at any other place.