Tenerife; Friday, 11 March, 2016

As it was an early flight I’d stayed over the previous night at an airport hotel, so I only had to make the short walk from the room to the check-in desk at 6am. Which was thankful as the incredibly thick fog meant that getting to the airport that morning would have been very difficult.

The fog was clearly going to cause major havoc with Gatwick’s operations by the middle of the day, but thankfully this early in the morning the plane was already at the airport and the delays were still pretty minor. In the end we pushed back less than 10 minutes late and headed off towards the South.

A strong tailwind meant that we landed on Tenerife around 20 minutes ahead of schedule, and with a reasonably quick run through the airport I was able to get a bus into Santa Cruz not that long after landing.

Having dropped off my stuff at the hotel I headed down into the centre of town to the Plaza de España and picked up the open-top sightseeing tour bus to take in the sights of the city and to get my bearings.

As it was a very pleasant afternoon, and most things were starting to close anyway I decided to do two loops (one on left side of the bus, one on the right) to get the most views, and that left me back at Plaza de España just before 7pm and the very quick sunset that takes place this close to the tropics.

I wandered back to the hotel to drop my camera and stuff off before freshening up and then heading out for dinner, having already found out that on the Canary Islands dinner starts at the more reasonable time of 8pm than it does in mainland Spain.

I had a very nice meal in an Inn on a small square before heading back up the hill to the hotel and a good night’s sleep.