{"id":4816,"date":"2013-11-12T22:05:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T21:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=4816"},"modified":"2023-07-18T11:32:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T10:32:35","slug":"tenerife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2013\/11\/12\/tenerife\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenerife"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nSo we spent a week on Tenerife, with sun, splashing and relaxation.<\/p>\n

Adrian and Ingrid are still young enough that we wanted a hotel with enough activities that we could just stay in when we wanted an easy day. So we stayed at one of those family resorts with a large pool area including a kids’ pool, and a children’s club with a variety of activities. This was just right for Ingrid who loved every minute of it, and did everything from children’s water aerobics to a Halloween “ghost hunt” (complete with candy).<\/p>\n

The hotel was in Las Americas, which turned out to be a really good area for us. Very close to decent beaches, and with lots of good restaurants. Our favourite restaurants: Monkey Bravo (Italian, very uneven service but excellent food) and Thai Botanico.<\/p>\n

We spent a few days just around Las Americas – at the beach, at a mini golf course, just walking around – but also went on three trips.<\/p>\n

One day we went to Aqualand, a nearby water park. This again was paradise for Ingrid. She’s old enough to wander around inside the park on her own: she can find her way around (and back) without getting lost, judge which slides are appropriate for her, make friends with other kids (with or without a common language). And she’s a good enough swimmer that I am comfortable with her being unsupervised in even the deepest children’s pools (but not yet in pools where the water is above her head).<\/p>\n

We’d read mixed reviews about Aqualand (that it was dilapidated, and bad service, and bad food, and having to pay extra for all sorts of things). So maybe it wasn’t all brand new and shiny, but it was fun, and in totally decent enough shape – and we brought our own food so we avoided their expensive crappy offering.
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\nAnother day we went to Loro Parque, an animal park. (They also served crappy lunches, almost inedible.) It was sort of like Kolm\u00e5rden, but denser, smaller and more “managed”. The animal exhibits were so-so and the enclosures were all so small that I felt sorry for all of the birds and animals. Kolm\u00e5rden really beats them on every front except one: Loro Parque had excellent animal shows. We saw dolphins, sea lions, and orcas, and they also had a parrot show. The shows were impressive, and (unlike at Kolm\u00e5rden) they ran lots of times throughout the day so it was easy to get a seat without any advance booking.<\/p>\n

Finally we also took a trip to Mount Teide, the world’s 3rd tallest volcano. Volcanos are pretty darn cool things, even when dormant. Lava fields are a bizarre sight: this wide expanse of fresh black rock that nothing grows on, rock that looks all hostile and “hellish” even hundreds of years later – right there for me to touch. This was a place that I really would have preferred to visit with fewer crowds and more time, and without kids who think a volcano is kind of cool but then feel done with it after 5 minutes (“been there, done that”) and thereafter keep asking “can we go back now”.<\/p>\n

As I said, Ingrid loved the whole experience, and it was a welcome week of rest for Eric and myself. Adrian on the other hand would have been happier at home, I suspect. He didn’t really complain but you could see he wasn’t comfortable with the whole thing. He likes playing in water but hates splashing, so he didn’t enjoy the pool or Aqualand, and the waves in the sea were also more scary than fun. And the house was wrong, the bed was wrong, the meatballs were wrong… the poor boy effectively lived on bread and french fries and fruit and nuts all week.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n
On top of the world<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So we spent a week on Tenerife, with sun, splashing and relaxation. Adrian and Ingrid are still young enough that we wanted a hotel with enough activities that we could just stay in when we wanted an easy day. So we stayed at one of those family resorts with a large pool area including a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[775,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eric","category-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4816"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17435,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions\/17435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}