- Travel
- Christmas
- Bodily Fluids
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On Seaside Towns
We took a little pre-Christmas break this year, nipping out to Tenerife for a week. F was very excited about this until we actually woke her on the day of the flight, at four in the morning. Then she howled and went back to bed.
Thomas Cook Sunwing hotels - nothing I'd ever been to before. And nothing, in my stuffy middle-class mindset, that I'd really considered as being relaxing. Even Tenerife had never appealed, I'd always had it pegged as a clubbing hotspot and nothing else. But a week of sitting by the pool, watching F and C get confident around water in blazing sunshine, and I'm convinced.
Bleak island, Tenerife. Craggy and dusty and deserty, scattered with little towns that look like miserable places to live. The ground doesn't look fit for human life, it's all gullies and sagebrush. No water other than the sea, which actually adds to the salt flat harshness of the place. Once you get into the towns, it's no better really, Hotel industry buildings, with everything desperate to tell you it's your home from home. Real English Food, Best Steak for Best Prices, Spectacular Sea Views, boasts each and every identikit bar. And the leathery touts hand you tickets and banter as you pass each one, until your pockets are full of business cards and your brain full of empty promises.
I still liked it! I just like moaning more. We didn't have to eat at any of the tourist traps, we'd gone all-inclusive with the hotel. Pacing the black beaches under the sun and examining knock-off bag shops at a snail's pace was surprisingly relaxing.
On Water
Neither of the girls like the sea yet. Too loud and scary for F. And C got some surf up the back of her legs unexpectedly, after which she would leg it for the dry part of the beach as fast as she could given a moment's notice.
The pools back at the hotel, though, that was different. Bath-warm water at either knee or thigh depth, depending on which of the kids' pools you chose. V and I lay next to the girls as they paddled and splashed, taking it in turns to panic when one or the other fell over or dunked her head in. By the end of the week, we were more or less lying still as they waded about, squirting each other and cackling.
Actually, a week-long bath was pretty much what I needed. Obviously, everything was mixed in with the standard tantrums and howls too. So it was tiring. But not tiring like home, where the filthy weather and darkness traps you indoors too often, and there's nothing new to see or do that doesn't cost money.
Dolphin watching was probably the most extreme distillation of the week. We sat in the bowels of a glass-bottomed catamaran watching pale flocks of strange creatures drift by, trying to convince F not to sulk by buying her squeaking, light-up keychains. At the time, it was actually exhausting and annoying, even slightly boring. But now we're home again, it's a memory of something exotic and unexpected to be treasured against the winter chills.
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