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

Nearly all the german shops are situated in the Canary Center, which is a shopping passage. Beside noble boutiques and other shops you can find here as well physiotherapists, traditional healer and medical consults (Deutsches Ärztehaus).

The visitor can find a large variety of products, articels and services and can be attended in german or english for better understanding.

In the Canary Center there are as well shops selling arts and crafts, lace and other souvenir articles. As well a jewelery is situated in the Canary Center. Who wants to enjoy german gastronomy can try different specialities in a tipical gourmet shop in the Canary Center. A health food shop and a pharmacy are situated near all this shops. Another healthy shop ist Zumeria Brasil, where you can get many different kinds of fruit juices and milk shakes.

Another shop to mention in the Canary Center is the bakery Millo. They offer original german bread with different kinds of corn like spelt or sunflower seeds and many more.

Other german and even english products you can buy in Supermercado 2000 next to the Canary Center. If you want to make a shopping tour and get some special products as german saussage and bread you can make a trip to the Canary Center in La Paz in Puerto de La Cruz. Next to this shopping center you can find plenty of hotels for your next holiday in Puerto de La Cruz on Tenerife.

One can watch dolphins and whales on the Ocean between the two islands Tenerife and La Gomera, neighbouring island.

The Loro Parque, a wonderful zoo in Puerto de La Cruz, sustains over 1.000 different kinds of parrots is a visit worth.

For active holiday makers who like hiking and exploring the isle of Tenerife has a lot of wonderful mointain pathes to discover.

One of the most popular destinations in Europe is Tenerife, primarily for it’s pleasant climate and spectaclular landscape.

If you visit the isle of Tenerife, at least you should taste something from the traditional cuisine.The small idyllic restaurants offer a varied and palatable kitchen with ingredients like fish, seafood, meat, potatoes, sweet potatoes and other kinds of vegetables combined with exquisite spices and fresh herbs.

Primarily fish, the paella, the different Tapas, the goat’s cheese, potatoes with a salt crust are very popular. As well as tortilla, the Alioli dip, Empanadas and the Canary fish-soup.

So take the opportunity to taste some tipical canary dishes when you make a stop during an exciting excursion on Tenerife.

The town hall at Los Silos in the north west corner of the island hopes to have the organic market up and running by March of next year.

The market will operate on Sunday mornings, though whether it will be a weekly, fortnightly or monthly event has still to be decided.

An aphid from America was accidentally imported into France in 1860, destroying vines that had been refined and nurtured over hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Phylloxera spread across the continent, bringing the European wine industry to its knees in little more than ten years.

Wine producers turned to different grape varieties, mostly phylloxera-resistant imported from America, and slowly the industry recovered.

Tenerife and the other islands in the Canarian archipelago survived the ravages of phylloxera and the ancient grape varieties that European settlers brought with them to the island after the Spanish conquest at the end of the 15th century continue to flourish to this day.

They make the wines produced on the island today unique.

So much so that the island authorities are now investigating the possibility of opening a wine office in the UK.

Tenerife in particular and the Canaries in general once had a flourishing trade with Britain. So popular was Canary wine that Shakespeare referred to it in two of his plays, Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Canary wine, a sweet, white fortified wine similar to Malmsey, was a favoured tipple of the British aristocracy for more than 150 years, until a political row brought the trade to an end.

What the Canaries lost the Portuguese island of Madeira gained as Britain turned its attentions to new source of Malmsey.

Now present-day Tenerife wine producers are attempting to re-establish the trade link that was broken nearly 350 years ago.

Tenerife wines have performed well in the international stage in recent years, featuring prominently among the gold winners at a number of important wine fairs.

A full range of events is planned for the week-long festival, starting on Sunday April 29 and continuing through to Sunday May 6.

They take place across the city, but mainly in Plaza del Príncipe, Parque García Sanabria and Calle La Noria.

The colourful series of events include an International Marionette Festival, several other puppet shows, an exhibition of flowers, a concert of Canarian music, and a flower crosses workshop and competition.

The whole city will be decked out with traditional floral crosses and the highlight of the programme will be on the evening of May 2, a Great Canarian Fiesta with traditional Canarian dress a prominent feature.

In 1999, the party, known as the Dance of Magicians, went into the Guinness Book of Records when 8,000 people ate, drank and danced in the streets in traditional costume.

The fiesta week is centred around May 3, the date on which the city was founded way back in 1494.

The tapas competition is another popular feature and is now in its sixth year. Restaurants and bars specialising in tapas will compete in three classes – traditional, creative and Canarian.

Participating establishments will not be revealed until nearer the date, though generally they are concentrated around Calle La Noria and surrounding streets, which make up the old part of the city.

The winners will become part of a ‘Ruta de la Tapa’ (Tapas Route) through the city, a great way of exploring the ancient capital while at the same time tasting some of its best gastronomic offerings.

May is a great month of celebration in Santa Cruz and the rest of the island, reflecting the traditional culture, history and religion of the island, and is marked by processions, pilgrimages and sporting contests.

Thanks to centuries of influences stirred into the mix by the island’s location along the busy trade routes down the coast of Africa, an eclectic collection of dishes now claim a place on the menus of Tenerife’s diverse restaurants.

However, there is one speciality certain to be found in any respectable Canarian restaurant, Papas Arrugadas.

These small new potatoes are boiled in their skins in salt water and usually served with a traditional mojo sauce, either green in colour when made with coriander, or fiery red when chillies and paprika have been added.

The potatoes are cooked in heavily salted boiling water, preferably using sea salt. Years ago sea water would have been used. The potatoes should float in the salted water. If they don’t, more salt needs to be added.

They should simmer for around 20 minutes, though bear in mind that Canarian potatoes can cook more quickly than the varieties were are used to in the UK.

Drain the water from the saucepan and cover the potatoes with a layer of sea salt, lower the heat and give the saucepan a shake to help the salt crystalise on the potato skins.

Finally, remove the saucepan from the heat and cover for a few minutes to allow the skins to shrivel and go wrinkly.

The traditional mojo sauce accompaniment can be easily assembled in a blender, using a garlic bulb, 200ml of olive oil, 150ml of white wine vinegar, a handful of fresh coriander, a teaspoon of cumin and a teaspoon of sea salt.

Blend the ingredients, slowly adding the coriander and olive oil last.

The alternative hot red mojo sauce is made in similar fashion, replacing the coriander with three dried red chillies and adding a teaspoon of paprika. The chillies need to be boiled and then soaked for an hour before use.

Blend all the ingredients except the olive oil, which should be introduced slowly at the end.

The Prime Minister of Spain, José Luis Zapatero, had to deal with just such an allegation in the build up to the country’s forthcoming elections when he took part in a live question and answer session on television.

Did he know the price of a cup of coffee, he was asked by a member of the audience.

He thought it was about 80 cents, a response that was greeted with much laughter by those in the studio, who were quick to accuse him of being out of touch with reality.

The following day the Spanish press, quick to latch on to his obvious discomfort, despatched reporters to all corners of the kingdom to conduct a nationwide survey.

They discovered that in most towns and cities across the peninsula a cup of coffee costs between one euro and 1.20.

The Prime Minister was roundly condemned as truly being out of touch.

But riding to rescue came the people of Tenerife, who reminded the newspapermen that on their fair island a cup of coffee could indeed be purchased for 80 cents.

And they invited the PM and anyone interested in this thorny issue to visit the island and see for themselves.

And it has given those whose job it is to promote the merits of Tenerife as a holiday destination an opportunity to stage something of an advertising coup by demonstrating that the cost of living in the ‘island of eternal spring’ is indeed lower than the rest of Spain – certainly where a cup of coffee is concerned.

In my experience, 80 cents might even be considered a little on the high side because there are many establishments in Tenerife still serving café cortado – a small, strong espresso with a dash of milk, usually served in a glass – for 70 cents and even the odd one or two who still have it at 60.