Las Palmas, Gran Canaria

It's a lovely sunny day, the ship is parked in dock on one of the lovely Canary Islands until nearly midnight, and me and himself don't have any tours to escort or classes to run.  We can do whatever we like.

Usually, when we find ourselves in this position, we are off as sooning as we dock, looking for the the interesting places, visiting cathedrals and monuments and trying to see as much as possible in the time we've got.  But today we decided to have a lazy day.   An exceptionally lazy day.  We didn't rush to breakfast, we didn't hurry off the ship and we didn't dash across town.  We just ambled 

We spent most of the morning on the beach, just a 15 minute amble to get to, on the other side of the peninsular from where the ship was docked.  The bay there is sheltered by a line of rocks which act as breakers against the waves of the sea, especially when the tide is out.   I went for a dip - delighted to see a shoal of large silver fish in the crystal clear water.  I wish we'd brought the goggles and snorkels now.  Wonderful.

A lovely couple of hours on th.e beach

Sand Sculptures the beach at Les Cantares

We enjoyed an Italian lunch, and then took a leisurely amble along the promenade noticing that the tide had come in now, and that the waves had risen above the natural breaker, turning the calm bay into something a little more adventurous.

Just like Scarborough, but with sun!  

We were looking for ice cream, and found a really good ice cream parlour at the end of the beach.  And I mean REALLY good.  We're going to remember that for our next visit.

Ambling on a little further, we found some lovely natural coves, full of foam and crashing waves.

We were beginning to flag by now and headed back through the city to the ship, stopping on the way to buy a necklace.  The chain part was made by twisting and lacing thick cotton in a way to make an attractive almost lace like collar using different colour threads.  I'd watched the men making them sitting by their stalls.   Very clever.  With a stone added, it is a lovely and unique little momento of our beach day.

The last thing to mention about today was Ross Robert's cabaret in Scott's Bar at the end of the day.  He has a wicked sense of humour and gave a brilliant show.  My favourite line had to be when one of the waiters happened to walk across the stage area behind Ross at the beginning of the act.  "It's OK," said Ross, "I've got his cabin number, I'll go walk through it one night when he's performing!" I nearly fell of he chair laughing.  The waiter looked suitably embarrassed. 

So that was our visit to Grand Canaria. Tomorrow we're in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. It'll only be a half day and we have no tours, but we like Tenerife. Class eh?