Tenerife, Spain Part 1

When planning our winter break holiday, I knew one thing, it must be a sunny, warm place.  It's quite hard to find that place over here without a long flight.  Seems weird, since in the states you can hop on a plane for an hour and a half and be in warm weather.  So, we decided to chance it and fly to the Canary Islands off of Spain.  I heard lots of different stories about the weather there this time of year, that it's still cold, very windy, and could be rainy.  We decided to chance it anyways....and we were very glad we did!  The weather the whole week was sunny and warm...just what we all needed after months of vitamin D-depleting Brussels weather.  The flight was a good 4 hours, but worth it and to top it off Grammy & Paps got to go along with us!

This was literally the view off of our balconies, yes balconies,plural! We had a fab house that was big and had a balcony off the kitchen, bedroom, and even on the rooftop.  The pool was an infinity pool, that was a bit too chilly for the kids but they hopped in every once in a while to cool off.

Emerson loved being outside!

The harbor down below.  Our house was built up the mountains, that's the only place to build houses there!

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We had to trap Emerson in somehow when we were out by the pool.  She was all over the place!

We had to walk up and down steep roads everyday to get into town

Found a cute little put-put place.  It was about as basic as you can get, but the kids had fun!

Sunset

The kids loved the beach!  I don't know why our pool was too cold but the ocean was fine...???  I think they just loved the waves, they asked everyday to go down there.  And they thought the black sand was cool too!

Drake just wanted to roll in it all day!

She didn't like sitting in it too much.

It's definitely black.  When dry it looked pretty, but wet looked just like mud!

We decided to go to another part of the island for a day.  Santa Cruz, the capital of Tenerife, was supposed to have some shopping and it was Carnival day there as well.  We booked a tour bus to go, since we had not rented a car ourselves, and it turned out to be an interesting day.  The Carnival celebration was a lot bigger than we thought.  It's the second most popular celebration, after Brazil, in Europe.  It starts with a parade and goes all night long.  Many people dress in the opposite sex's clothing, which is a tradition.  It was very crowded and no shops were open!!!  Only some restaurants were open but no shopping for me.  It was also cold and rainy there...just an hour and a half from where we were but totally different weather.  Our tour guide says it was a lot due to all the industry in the city.  We had fun but were ready to get back to our warm weather!

There were a lot of these street performers.  This one we thought was pretty interesting, looking like he was sitting but there was no chair....hmmmm

This guy was pretty funny.  Looked like 3 men but was only one and he would whistle and make faces at all the girls.  Very creative!

Some pics from the parade.  It was so crowded that Preslee had to get on Mike's shoulders so we could get a few pics.

Even Mr. T was there!

Where's my sun???

All lit up at night!

And the parade was still going.....

It was a good first couple of days in Tenerife.  Part 2 comin up.....