Leaving Madrid

Our brief time in Madrid is over and we are off to the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. We booked a ride service to pick us up at our apartment and I must say, they were great. We have used Rideways several times in Europe and have always had prompt and courteous service in a "small limo" for the same price as a smelly taxi. All prepaid and no hassles.

Madrid is a large city, the metropolitan area has a population of about 6 million. On our ride to the airport we noticed a distinct lack of houses, everyone seems to live in apartments. While waiting for our plane to the Canaries, I decided to do some research and found this telling statistic.

We flew Iberia Air Express to Tenerife, about 2h 45m. A cheap flight with everything extra. A small bottle of water was the equivalent of C$5.00

The airport was compact which made getting our rental car and luggage fairly easy. We got a small Spanish car, a Seat Ibiza that had seen a few trips around the island. I will be fine for the distances we will be going and is small and easy to park. The first navigational issue was when my Garmin GPS didn't seem to want to display any detailed road maps. Luckily my phone has a data plan and we were able use Google maps to navigate to our apartment in the town of La Laguna. Subsequently I found out that when I updated my GPS maps, I had only downloaded the north Europe maps. Garmin had split the previous one Europe map into two and I somehow did not select the south Europe maps.

Our apartment is fabulous. One block off one of the main pedestrian streets in this UNESCO Heritage city. Apparently it used to be the Police station that was remodelled with all of the latest finishes into a number of deluxe apartments. We are fully equipped with a complete kitchen, washer & dryer, dishwasher, two bathrooms, two bedrooms and a walk in wardrobe room.

After settling in, we went out for a walk at 4:00 pm and discovered that just about everything was closed up because of the Sabbath or siesta. We did find a little cafe open for a snack and a drink. The heart of the city is all pedestrian streets and most buildings are from the 1600 - 1700's

Restaurants do not open until 8:00 pm so we returned to our place to sort out a few things. I spent about an hour trying to get connected to the internet but finally gave up and e-mailed the rental agent.
By then it was time to go out for supper so we had a look on Trip Advisor and found a nearby authentic Italian Pizzeria that was rated #10 out of 4000 restaurants on Tenerife. That sounded like just about what we needed.


The owner was a real laugh and when he found out we were from Canada, started making jokes about Donald Trump. Better yet, when for some reason he couldn't make change for the E30 cash I gave him, said the E20 would be enough. Not bad for a large pizza, eggplant lasagna appetizer, 2 x wine and 2 x beer!