A week in sunny Tenerife

Just back from a week in Tenerife with Sam, Lucy, Arthur and Saoirse. We stayed at the GF Victoria in Adeje and it was great weather – up in the high 20s and lots of sun.

We went to Adeje around this time last year and stayed at the Roca Nivaria. This year’s hotel, another five-star inclusive package, was better for Arthur as the swimming pools were more child-friendly and there were lots of them.

It’s great to have a sunny, warm week in winter. While we were away last year, we had a really chilly February with a bitter storm dubbed ‘The Beast from the East’ but February 2019 has been unseasonably warm with record temperatures recorded and lots of sun. There were bumble bees and butterflies in our garden in mid Feb and all the spring bulbs are well advanced.

I could have got a sun tan working at the allotment, but you never know these things when you book.

Holidays are quite expensive and here’s (roughly) what this one cost.

Hotel - £2,500
Drinks and extras - £350
Flights - £350
Hotel at Gatwick - £100
Parking - £50
Dog boarding kennels - £120
Taxi transfers - £50

It’s around £3,500, so not one of those holidays where it’s cheaper to live in Spain than it is in the UK. We also had Jason Robinson in to paint the stairs while we were away, so that was an extra £470 – my poor old bank balance!

In the Sky Bar before the grandchildren arrived.

The Victoria is really nice. The room was great – we were on the fifth floor – and there are glass lifts at various points. We had a balcony with views of the family and adults’ pools, also an Atlantic sunset, there was a lounge, separate bedroom, en-suite bathroom and additional shower/loo. Two TVs, tea and coffee, fridge, safe and lots of wardrobe space.

The hotel is modern and quite stylish, with two bars, two restaurants and lots of sports/play facilities.

We were supposed to arrive all together on the Saturday, but Sam’s holiday package went wrong when the airline taking them to Tenerife from Jersey went bust. There have been several small airlines bankrupted as we head towards Brexit. It’s probably not all Brexit’s fault, but it is a major contributing factor.

It meant that instead of getting there on Saturday, his holiday was now Monday to Monday and so we missed two days with the grandchildren.

We spent Saturday looking around the hotel (that took a while) and popping into the nearby shopping centre to buy a hat. I’d left my Panama at home (you always forget something). There’s a nice open-air bar on Planta Cinco where it says you can watch the sunset over the Atlantic. You can, but another pretty hotel with a little bell tower blocks the view of the orb disappearing into the water.

The hotel was very quiet – there were only four people in the bar and definitely no need to worry about finding a vacant sun-lounger. Breakfast and dinner were in the price (not lunch and not wine). We took meals in the restaurant on the ground floor, which was a help-yourself feast (if you wanted it to be). I had fillet steak three nights (cooked to order), pork steak another night and once I went Italian and had risotto followed by pizza. There was a choice of sweets (a little on the sickly side) and a good selection of cheese. Breakfasts (for me) were porridge or rice pudding, followed by fruit, nuts and yoghurt. I had scrambled eggs and toast on a couple of days.

There was entertainment in the ground-floor bar each night from 6am to 9pm. We saw a decent singer and a violinist; a mediocre rock band playing covers and a useless pianist. We quite enjoyed the acrobat troupe.

Chatting to artists and people in the bar, it’s amazing what a small word we have become. A singer was from the Czech Republic and she spoke English, Spanish and Russian (at least), the violinist was Hungarian and he’d lived in Ireland and Spain (where he’d met his Argentinian wife) before moving to the Canaries; waiting staff were from Morocco and Venezuela (among others) and guests were from UK, Austria, Russia and Scandinavia (among others). It’s such a shame that the EU’s freedom of movement, which can allow a Czech singer to work in the Canaries, is being lost. As the world gets smaller and more open, Little England is pulling up the drawbridge and saying “we don’t want to be part of this.”

Arthur had enjoyed the open-air play pool on the Fifth Floor. It was paddling-pool shallow and had lots of fun slides for toddlers. He’d been on all the toddler slides on Tuesday and also in the big family pool on the Second Floor level in the afternoon.

It was really encouraging because he was quite nervous about water last year. I bought him a bucket and water squirter and Sam got him some Paw Patrol arm-bands, so we thought he’d be well set for the week. However, on Wednesday, he didn’t want to go in the water and wasn’t interested in the slides. He was coaxed in, but wouldn’t do more than paddle or play with his bucket and squirter. Saoirse was taken for a dip and tolerated the wet, but was not really up for it. She seemed quite shocked and puzzled by the experience.

On Friday, Sam and I (in an effort to encourage Arthur) went on the two big water slides in the deep part of the fun pool. One was rather nice, but the other was a high, closed tube that turned you over like a bobsleigh and gave my sinuses a jet-wash when I plunged into the water. Arthur wasn’t inspired by our heroics.

Our trip home was good. We left the hotel at 9.30am, Tenerife South airport was busy, but our flight was on time and we landed at Gatwick around 4.45pm. We got through passport, baggage and customs pretty quickly and were lucky to find a car-park bus waiting at the stop.

Head-to-head with grandma.

The roads were really quiet and we were at Friar Tuck’s in Whittlesey at 7.50pm for two Senior Meal Deals.

Jason has done a nice job on the stairs and Holly was delighted to see me on Sunday morning. I think a spell in kennels does her good, it makes her appreciate what a cushy life she has!

After-dinner cocktails (and rum)

Jason has done a nice job on the stairs.