Canary Islands - Day 5

Today we all slept in and decided it was a beach day. We had wanted to hire a driver to take us to the volcano but they don’t really do that here. A taxi isn’t viable as they’ll drop you off but no way to get back.

Had a lovely morning at the beach. Both of my girls still to this day love to dig in the sand. I didn’t bring the collapsible bucket with me because I thought they’d outgrown it. They made do with their hands.

We showered and headed into the capital to go shop at the outdoor shopping mall. We ordered off the McDonald’s menu-all in Spanish. Every condiment is salsa. Barbecue? Salsa. What do you call the real salsa or what we call salsa? I have no idea.

Lex and I went into a candy store to get a few things. I had never seen gummy feet or gummy dentures before so here we are. We also went into a grocery store that had a housewares too but I can’t think of a store to compare it to. HiperDino did not let us down, we love to explore grocery shops on vacations and see the weird and fascinating meats, spices, and overall goods.

I made the mistake of going into this store called “Shopping in Paradise”. Spent way more than I should have but the deals were really good! As I’m strolling along I see a familiar perfume bottle. A bottle I hadn’t seen for probably 35 years. There in all its glory was a flat, round bottle with a swan imprinted on it. Gloria Vanderbilt. My mom used to wear it when I was a kid. Pretty sure it was before my siblings were born too. I sprayed it on a card strip and took a whiff.

I thought I would be flooded with memories like going to racquetball or shopping at Peaches for the latest hits on 45’s. Nothing?

I bought some cute jewelry because I always need cute jewelry and then we headed back.

Some things I noticed on the drive back. Lots of roundabouts. Traffic lights are small here. Stop signs say “Stop”. I guess maybe that’s universal? Yield signs are blank. Gas appears to be cheap unless I’m really misunderstanding. (It’s by liter…). They have a brand new Aldi.

We ventured out to Puerto Del Carmen again tonight for dinner. We were looking for an Asian place we saw last night but I really didn’t have the patience to walk tonight. Not being lazy. I’m still walking this trip with a toe that’s falling apart. I’m literally taping it to other toes and wearing the post-op shoe. So I gave in and let a guy off the street who was luring people to his upstairs restaurant persuade us to look at the menu. We all agreed to give it a shot. I had fresh sea bass with prawns. Ed had filet mignon. Lex had a filet mignon kebob. (She also discovered bernaise sauce). And Annicakes had her pizza margherita…which she’s had almost every day on this trip. We hit a few shops before returning to the room.