Day 3 (February 4, 2011)
Itinerary: Fly Barcelona to Tenerife, check into Hotel Rural Victoria in La Orotava
I’m ready for vacation to start. I feel like I’ve been traveling for 3 days, and I have. I left the US on Wednesday and it’s already Friday. I’m still not at the final destination.
The Barcelona hotel has been nice, but we were up early to catch the train to the airport. Once we purchased our train tickets and entered the turnstile, however, we found out the airport train had been canceled! The next train wasn’t for 30 more minutes and we didn’t feel as if it would leave us enough time to check in at the airport. So, a taxi it was.
The Barcelona airport is much bigger than I thought it would be. It definitely rivals any other international airport I’ve been to. Spainair was easy to check in to and soon we were eating breakfast near our gate. The flight to Tenerife was uneventful, but rather uncomfortable as there seemed to be less leg room than usual.
Finally we touched down in Tenerife, Canary Islands! It is gorgeous here! The weather is sunny and warm, the sky is clear, and the people seem friendly. We exited the airport and found our bus. We had one connection to make and it was a bit confusing trying to figure out which bus stop to get off of. The bus stops were not labeled or numbered and the scrolling display on the bus only showed the upcoming stop briefly.
While waiting for our next bus, we were able to really appreciate the warm island. When I had looked ahead at the weather, I was expecting 60s, but clearly in the sun it was at least 80.
Finally we arrived in La Orotava by bus and made the longish trek uphill to our hotel. We are at the Hotel Rural Victoria and so far we love it. Our suite has two rooms and a bathroom. We have a big balcony on which we can look out to the mountain or down to the road to people watch. The wifi is fast and easy to connect to. Plus the hotel has a rooftop access with views overlooking the entire town down to the coast. We certainly lucked out here considering I did about 5 minutes of research to find this place.
The hotel was able to serve us a late lunch at 4pm and then we went back to the room to collapse. I don’t think we did much of anything tonight except make it to the grocery store to buy some ice cream for dinner/dessert.
