Holiday Snaps: Returning home

Dining alone

It has been a wonderful 10 sunny days and it is time to return to the cooler and colder climes of the Netherlands.

My dining table arrangements were not that good, the people sat beside were either glum or absorbed amongst themselves, and the companion I had in the last few nights was single, quiet and piled on the food as if the Apocalypse was on within the hour.

There wasn’t much conversation to make between mouthfuls of gluttonous abandon, I would have been a killjoy if I had tried to make conversation, he was on a mission – get my money’s worth and more.

The best and above the rest

The Riu Palace Maspalomas Hotel is now the best hotel in the whole of the Canary Islands in terms of quality, service and standard – it is a 4-star superior hotel, but it is the people that make a hotel and the people here are just the cream of the crop in terms of services, affability, approachability and more – the directors are as involved as the cleaners in making this place a wonderful place.

The experiment in trying to attract a trendier crowd of a few years ago has been aborted, the hotel has returned to what it is traditionally good at, rooms, food, ambience and well, some of the entertainment.

They definitely do not need new clientele, it is possible that over 70% of the guests have stayed here before, this was my 7^th time.

He and she not like 80

The last three breakfasts I had with a most interesting and humorous couple who are in their 80s, we met 2 years ago and I wrote about them then, it was such a pleasure to see them, they are here for 5 weeks and I was regaled with a few more tales of their adventures round the world.

He has been retired for 27 years now and they are living their lives to the full, I really have not met people as wonderfully engaging as them and he is a raconteur extraordinaire.

They have visited over 100 countries, been round the world twice and the lady is such a sport as she is mischievous, you want to grow old as them and they have minds you will find in backpackers in their twenties discovering the world in awe and wonder and yet they are octogenarians.

They will celebrate their diamond jubilee of marriage in September; a letter from the Queen would be in order.

Mother, man and husband

Another lady I was pleased to see again had visited some 18 months ago with her son and his partner. We just got on well, they arrived a few days ago and she came to my table to say hello, we have had long chats and I have had stories to tell after our last meeting.

People just get interested, involved, engaged and lovely, that is what you want to see on holiday and it amongst such people you want to be when away from home.

I hope to return later this year, in May perhaps and then at Christmas when the earlier couple plan to be here for the long stretch of 11 weeks. Deo volente.

Holiday Snaps: Suffering for being hip

Wi-Fi for social settings

My hotel provides wireless connectivity for Internet access (Wi-Fi) in the main lobby which means people are not locked up in their rooms being anti-social surfing the Net when they could be half interacting with other guests.

I am glad the hotel took my suggestion to provide this service in 2007 and decided not to charge for the privilege – only the Radisson hotel chain on mainland Europe offers this service free of charge, most others charge a fortune for it, it is like being fined for taking a breath having just survived a drowning – Outrageous.

Works for me

My trusty NetBook – Toshiba NB100 with a non-standard 2GB of RAM running Windows 7 – is the ideal travel computer, small enough not to create excess baggage but useful enough to allow me do all I need to do. 17” screen luggables pretending to be laptops are definitely not holiday baggage, surely, but I have seen quite a few of those.

My phone which is a Windows phone – HTC Diamond Touch Pro 2 – has a touch screen and a stylus that I use for Grafitti script a carry-over from Palm Pilot/Handspring days and it works for me but I rarely do much on the phone in terms of writing apart from entering contacts, sending SMS messages or scribbling in URLs, the rest is a swipe, a scroll, a tap and I am fine.

Books are not for kindling

Now, a good few tech-savvy guests have their Kindles and they have been busy reading their novels with ease, I probably should have bought myself an e-Reader too but something about the flipping of pages of paper, the smell, the feel and the fact that you can see how far you have gotten from the binding means a e-Reader would soon wear out its novelty just as my electronic Sudoku toy did – I prefer the Times Sudoku Puzzle books, ink pens and writing to the electronic version.

More so, there are people with Apple iPads, I do not think I have made all my views known about those devices, in fact, most of which would make my blog almost a frontispiece for yellow journalism at best and bordering on the illicit use of words in polite society though it can be put quite subtly, it is not as practical as Always.

Typing like watching bad porn

Whilst I have been fascinated by the iPad, touched it, handled it, ogled at it and half wished for something like it, it cannot replace either my NetBook or my phone and it really cannot do the work of both.

Typing text on a touchscreen has to be worse than watching badly made Manga porn, no clicking keys and no feedback – I do a lot more text than other kinds of media, it just would not do; whilst the direct contact with a touchscreen is definitely more fun than the restrictions of a little mouse tracking pad, the fact is the gadget shop at Schiphol airport is seeing a good deal of iPad accessory keyboards fly off their shelves.

Evidence that something is missing that could make the iPad very useful and fun to use, but let us just say the iPad came with a stylus too and Graffiti Script was added with the ability to write straight to screen than just to a portion of the screen with the necessary technology to convert that handwriting recognition to proper text, the iPad might well be onto something and might just have the chance of replacing other gadgets I have.

However, Apple gives us what they think we must have rather than what people really might want to make their lives easier – for bloggers like me, my review of the Apple iPad might still be consigned to watching other people suffer the pleasures of being hip but quite close to silly too. Alas!

Holiday Snaps: At the font of letters amiss

The baptism of the font

Being a veteran of desktop publishing when it was a technical feat requiring your read the manuals to know what you were doing, I think I have a good idea about typesetting.

This was a time when you only had three fonts, Times New Roman, Helvetica and Courier, you had various weights and learnt that you did not throw everything on the screen and print out on paper with the thought that you were some artistic genius.

Printers were expensive and memory was not cheap and when you got new fonts it took the best part of 8 hours or more to build the font tables for each weight – you appreciated the luxury of variety and with moderation applied what you had to differentiate your work from others.

Rue the fate of the guru

Serifs, san serifs, proportional spacing, kerning, ghosting, pitch were some of the many terms brought from the printing world into the domain of personal computer software.

What I was involved in was not typical of the cut and paste collages by Patrick & Pets Printing Press just down the street, this was legal publishing in volumes as much as 40 requiring thoroughness and consistency you had to be meticulous.

Along the way, you picked the flyer type of work knowing that you were encroaching on the turf of traditional printers who were loath to embrace technology or were afraid they would lose influence.

The part about influence was something I experienced when I interviewed for a job at the BBC Enterprises and I was told I was selling myself short, a euphemism for you are a threat to our cosy setup – I was being hired as a desktop publishing guru with pedigree and I was to report someone whose background was from the toil and graft of setting type – I moved on, but it was tough lesson in 1991.

Brewing tea from steak

In any case, desktop publishing is no more the exclusive technical field it once was; everyone can churn out that most impressive work or the downright rottenly bad thing thinking they have done a work of commendable art.

Another sign came into view just last night, very big type at a restaurant I might have dared to patronise, SILOIN STEAK it read, someone had dropped a letter - Arggh! And I wonder how rare it would have become if a few more letters were dropped to allow for larger type whilst fitting the words to the width of the A2 size poster.

The tricks of desktop publishing, language, correctness and fitting all reaching for some consensus like if the STEAK lost the S and the K, the meat of the meal would have metamorphosed into Ceylon Tea – the rumpus of forgetting to spell check signs and the trouble that ensues.

Even Es are good

However, the economic situation in Spain was brought into stark relief when I noticed that name tag on one of the waiters in the hotel restaurant had lost a letter, he said it was due to the cuts – it was centred to create excite the animosity between the Catalans and the Castellans, the former preferring to drop the E on the end and the latter keeping it.

Which brings me to a memory of childhood – songs on the Children’s Television Workshop about how the E on the end can make all the difference between a tub and a tube; a scar and a scare and when driving a car, do it with care – English suddenly takes on a modicum of difficulty requiring everyone just make sure the letters are all in place, in the right order and check against a basic English dictionary.

Holiday Snaps: The message to kids about the times

A mind on the run

Wandering thoughts as the mayhem and noise around you gets blanked out for the mind to consider, contemplate, ruminate and meditate.

Between the madness of the outrageous to that goodness of the sublime pictures and scenarios are created, analysed and discarded one thought jumping to another without any sense of how they link up.

Cleaning up with English

The sign I saw, “Need? Clean you house, #”, got me thinking about how English can be so forgiving that we almost fully understand what is intended. This was no doubt a collision of Spanish and German aspiring to a global audience.

A little help from an English friend would have cleared out your house not leaving a speck of dust and the malapropisms that accompany describing a mess. “Do you need to clean your house?” or “House Cleaner Needed?” for brevity and directness, but everyone seems to have the notion of being better users of English than they really are.

Just because their command of English is better than your fluency in their language does not automatically mean their command of English is of the quality that allows for publication of good notices, it only means you can both communicate, even if barely so.

From David to everything else

Children; sons and daughters; their parents and the interactions but it never ceases to amaze me the resemblances I notice seeing that visage of the father or the eyes of the mother, evidence without the need for intrusive testing.

Michelangelo’s David is probably the most perfect specimen of how a man should look; the excess of lipid tissue or muscle just does not enhance the appreciation of that bearing.

When a child begins to take on features that prognosticate a future of obesity, there is need to worry why we do not allow kids to work themselves out a bit and keep fit for the sake that it would be good for them as much as it would be good for the parents. However, in the absence of good example the future might be bleak.

At breakfast, it was not the three musketeers but musculars if that word might be permitted, just this once. Walking with arms almost akimbo not because they have taken that pose but the gym has seen too many visits that the muscles have become a deformity. Muscle Marys, they are called and they are – Oh! Not so David, trust me.

Hard times for tough people

The times are tough, hard and difficult, more businesses have closed, bars have notices that have hung there for months and there have been no takers.

The ones that have stayed open to the high season are having brisk business, in the years since I wrote the blog about settling in Gran Canaria things have changed and people have had to adapt to the situation and circumstances.

I braved the carterista (pick-pocket in Spanish) shops for a cable and was pleasantly surprised at being offered the cable at 33% less the price tag without having even seen the price, maybe lessons have been learnt that we would go elsewhere than be fleeced.

As for the chap who has been frazzled by the warmth of Canarian sunshine that he is planning to settle here, if you can survive these times, you will definitely live here a long time.

I must spare a thought for those who gave up everything for the hard life in the sun with the hope that they will retire here and had to make the very difficult decision of closing shop, the brave and courageous fight to avoid failure in which they might have lost homes too, returning to their lands of origin hopefully plotting a return – these have been really hard times and everyone knows that.

Holiday Snaps: Where everybody knows my name

Knowing me, knowing you

It is almost an embarrassment of familiarity, the greetings, the handshakes, the kisses, the hugs, the banter; I am in the hotel equivalent of the comedy series, Cheers, I am where everybody knows my name according to the signature tune of the show.

The bellboy who took in my bags from the taxi, started the now familiar greeting; “Welcome to your second home”; just then two of the directors were outside and the warmth of feeling even made the typical 20° Centigrade average for December feel even warmer.

At the reception, it was like I was being expected, I had only booked the holiday just about 36 hours before and everything had been smoothed out, there as a new face that had to adapt to the situation, the question – Who is this man? Going through his mind as he aped the motions hoping to be just at ease as the others.

My room or another

I had arrived early, they gave me two options; whilst I am a single guest, I am always given a double room, my usual room was not really, yes, I do have a usual room but a few doors down I could check the room to see if it was to my liking before having it arranged.

In fact, I did not mind either way, I could wait a few hours for my usual room or take the one that was available – in the end; I took the available room and settled in fine.

Tap water is not potable in Gran Canaria, so I shopped for bottled water and other drinks then relaxed in the lobby where there is wireless fidelity access, a smart way to get people out of their rooms to socialise with other guests who cannot afford to be offline for long.

A long walk to the beach buffeted by strong winds was good exercise but I had to be back by six for dinner, the late session was fully booked so I had to make do with an early dinner.

We meet for fun

People came down in their best, ball gowns and men in wear almost formal for Ascot but without the hats, I did a Nigerian number with a fully embroidered top and a cap to match, a feast for the reluctant paparazzi.

Just before dinner most of the staff including the caterers and chefs lined up at the bar with lit sparklers offering New Year’s greetings in 8 languages to great applause.

The dinner was grand buffet but one could not resist the artistic genius of the fruit carvers, you just had to get the camera out; filled and sated to soporific ascendancy, I thought I’ll have a nap to get up at 10:00 PM for the New Year’s Eve entertainment which from German and Roman Catholic provenance is called the feast of Saint Sylvester but it was well after 11 before I took my seat at the venue.

We rang in the New Year with grapes for each toll of the bell towards midnight, a Spanish tradition and then went outside to watch the spectacular fireworks put on by the hotel ending with a slow burning Feliz 2011.

The rest of the night is a blur … it would not be written about. as to why it could not stay anywhere else on Gran Canaria, it is my 7^th time at this hotel and they are always glad you came.

This is the theme song from Cheers and I am sure you will know that feeling too.

Happy New Year!

Voyage to the land of the friendly volcano

Tenerife Classica

Yesterday, I went on my third tour to the Canarian island of Tenerife but I wanted to do something different.

In my previous visits, I had gone to Loro Parque, known for its parrots, penguins, dolphins, seals, orca whales and orchids, I had done the general tour and the behind-the-scenes tour, but I felt there was more to Tenerife than that attraction.

A day trip to Tenerife from Gran Canaria is as easy and as difficult as it might seem but it could easily be a 20-hour day from when you are picked up from the hotel in the morning until when you are dropped off at night.

This tour was called Tenerife Classica and supposedly was to take you on a tour of Tenerife and up the Mount Teide which peaks at 3,717 metres above sea level.

Earlier or worse

The hotel had prepared an early breakfast for my wakeup call at 05:45 hrs and the bus pickup at 06:30, there were a few more pickups around our area of the island till we got to a rendezvous point at San Agustin where other tourists joined us and we had the first change of guides.

For the trip, I did not think the bus was that comfortable, I had the feeling it was going to be the main vehicle throughout the whole journey as was the arrangement for the Loro Parque tours I had been on before.

At Las Palmas we picked another guide who saw us to the port at Agaete where we boarded the catamaran ferry to Santa Cruz de Tenerife which takes 70 minutes.

Sea me or see food again

Honestly, I would make the worst deck hand, I have no sea legs, I dosed up on mints, closed my eyes and listened to classical music as the vessel rock to a rhythm that kept my stomach in churn of butterflies and moths for hours after.

How I had the constitution not to see my breakfast or last night’s dinner escapes me, but I was so glad that it was over when we finally arrived, I think many others fared a lot less than I did, my sympathies went to them – it was the roughest of all the journeys I had made to Tenerife ever.

Amen to the tour guide

We boarded another more comfortable tour bus and had another tour guide, we were changing guides like the changing of the guard, only we were not royalty.

We were told Tenerife was the largest of the Canarian Islands and as he switched between German, English, French and Spanish the musicality of his diatribes are nigh on a Latin mass without the incense.

In fact, each language was delivered with the rapidity and intonation of Spanish, he was well into the third language before I realized he had finished the first – no pauses whatsoever between the languages.

The Spanish have invaded

German is typically the first foreign language on Gran Canaria and Tenerife because the German are always invading these islands, it does not appear anyone is complaining, but the way the tour guide went on about the Spanish conquerors of the 14^th Century, you’ll be forgiven for thinking it happened yesterday.

Somehow, I have the feeling that Canarians still carry a sense of loss of pride and independence because of that and it have seeped down through the generations as a angst ridden association with mainland Spain which is some 2,000 kms up North.

In all we heard that Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the capital and Tenerife was the largest island, with the highest mountain, it became the refrain to the canticles of the tour narrative.

Mounting expectations

And so we made for Mount Teide, in fact, I thought we were going to climb it after a point, but the first realisation was that the mountain we used to see our drive-bys towards Loro Parque was not in the back yard, it was a good 54 kilometers into the hinterland land through forests to a moonscape terrain that fills you with bewilderment.

The first stop for coffee and conveniences was in the large humidifier, I correct myself, we were in the clouds which had a constant wetness as if it was continuous rain, no dehumidifier could survive an hour sucking the moisture out of the air, we were at just about 1,000 metres up and we all thought that was how it would be until we go to the top of the mountain.

About 200 metres above that we are in the pine and eucalyptus forests where we learnt that eucalyptus trees grow so far and that is why the bark gets naturally stripped off and they are a menace because they suck up so much water from the soil.

Unending sunshine

Soon we were in the glow of the sunshine, see Mt Teide from afar in its glory but without the winter snow cap, to one end we could also see the Izaña Astrophysical Observatory – Tenerife above the clouds boasts over 300 days of clear skies and sunshine – between Tenerife and La Palma they have the most concentration of observatories.

We never got to summit Mt Teide, it does have a cable car that can take you to the top but I suppose that comes as part of a tour for guests holidaying on the island itself, but we heard enough about Father Teide waiting to regale us, succour us and give us the pleasure of its beauty, to have gone to the summit would have belittled its mystique and been an anticlimax

Geology 101

But there was a moonscape around the mountain with lava flows stopped and recorded in time – my geology knowledge was updated as I realised that lava might flow like liquid and present a deceptively smooth looking surface, no could be further from the truth when it all solidifies, it is lots of rocks and big ones at that.

The Canarian islands are extrusions from volcanic activity that have occurred over millions of years and there are been more recent volcanic erupts, we were told the black looking lava flows were young at just under a thousand years and we could not for certain say the volcanoes were extinct – we were at that point introduced to the friendly volcanoes that have not erupted and disrupted lives for centuries.

I could not say I know the difference between calderas or craters, they all belong to the same kind of volcanic landscape but we go to the highest point we would at the cathedral and that was a view to behold – it was breathtaking as it was wonderful.

And the rest of the day

It leaves one amazed that people could visit the islands and be stuck between the beach, the hotel and the bar that shows familiar stuff one is used to at home when the beach is hardly the best expression of the beauty of the island.

I have gotten my dose of the sun already and would have to apply some suntan lotion to my bald head, it has so seriously been sunburnt I look like a character off Star Trek and I am moulting – Bah!

By the time we were back through the clouds to the South of the Tenerife where we were let loose in the tourist shops for 75 minutes, the day was far gone.

A stop over at the cartel restaurant offering Canarian fayre and cheap plonk was good enough, I swore off the plonk and did end up scoffing so much ice cream in one day, I’ll have to do purgatory.

The journey back was better, the sea was calmer and my stomach did not churn at all, I was dropped off at my hotel at 21:27 hrs and the dinner left in my room did not once appeal to me.

Pictures will be published in earnest.

Hotel life: Faced with scary mornings

The company of tables

I was down for breakfast and my inability to remember faces got the better of me. Guests get allocated a table for dinner for the duration of their stay in the hotel.

Being alone I have always required that I be put on a table adjacent to others so that I could strike up conversation and hopefully have my dinner with a modicum of social significance rather than rushing through a 3-course meal in less than 30 minutes.

The maitre ‘d always seems to get it very right, I usually get sat next to English speaking guests and I also have the choice of moving tables or having an earlier sitting for dinner. This could be 18:00hrs instead of 20:00hrs, I prefer the later sitting.

Cannot see it all

The retired couple is from Yorkshire, Skipton in fact which seems to have a reputation that could make my face go bright red – the Women’s Institute there is breaking new ground at least that is where the Calendar Girls [1] are from, the demure ladies who have posed for calendars with strategically place home goods to cover their obvious nudity.

This break with traditional country wife imagery was to raise money for leukemia research and the calendars have raised upwards of 2 million pounds.

However, it highlights the fact that you can never know what goes on in these places and when you do, do prepare to be shocked if you have feeble sensibilities.

Having good company

Robert and Vera are quite likeable though I have not been able to glean enough about them, I know that Vera has been a secretary in education and in the car industry, she appeared to have enjoyed what she did, in fact, I suggested that secretaries are usually the lifeblood of a business even though they are not accorded that much recognition for their services.

A few days ago, Vera seemed to choke on a her steak that she was almost violently sick, I was quite concerned but in what could only be evident when observed Robert was immediately by her side ready to do everything to make her comfortable and better.

He had immediately passed her his napkin, but then from observation he was almost more chivalrous than a knight, it was touching but isn’t that was long marriages are supposed to do?

A morning of terror

Anyway, like I said at the beginning of the blog, I saw this lady sat reading a paper which I should have first checked was English before becoming too forward in my enthusiasm to be friendly.

I thought it was Vera so made to say Good morning, and persisted till she acknowledged my presence, it was then that I realised it was not Vera but I had to follow through the awkward situation I had put myself in.

I was not prepared for the response, she was first startled, she jumped in what was certainly not mock terror and was too late to gather herself to respond and suddenly I felt like a gold-digger with an interest in a sugar mummy – I could not have been more embarrassed as I made for my seat sorry for the fact that the lady must have had some experiences in her life that probably should be left untold.

Single older women in luxury hotels, well, I just have to be very, very careful, I cannot be responsible for situations that could create serious emergencies – that is hotel life, for you.

Sources

[1] Calendar Girls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fly away holiday

Work hard play hard

Going on holiday is an integral part of my work-life balance, I work hard but reasonably within the hours God provides rather than all hours as if we have reached the end of time.

A whole stretch of working is always followed by a period of holiday that would last a minimum of 15 days and can go up 22 days.

The holiday we get in Europe is one reason why I will not cross the pond for work, productivity should always include the ability to have more time off, productivity is not living in fear of losing your job and only having 2 weeks off a year – that, in my view is slavery. Period. To borrow an Americanism.

For good reason you need the first week to wind down, the second to get out and do stuff beyond the routine of bathing, beer and beach.

By the third week you should be ready to return and be the freshest proponent of your calling and career as well as have stories to tell about your experiences and adventures – my stories are told in my blogs and pictures – I take plenty of them and throw them up on flickr.

Routine or adventure?

Planning a holiday is not too difficult, it settles somewhere between seeing something new which I do at least once a year and returning to old haunts which have their benefits of comfort, security, knowledge and service.

Packing for holiday is however a completely different conundrum and one struggles between what one wants and what one needs. Not to forget anything I might need is what I want but I never end up with what is really needed.

So, after shopping for holiday things – first aid kit, vitamins, batteries and reading material it was left to me to pack for 3 weeks holiday in the sun, not just shorts but other things that would allow you to turn out well without having to go shopping for those things whilst away.

Scheduled for a charter

Usually, I travel to Gran Canaria by scheduled flights but that includes a stop-over in either Barcelona or Madrid and a 4 and a half hour direct flight from Amsterdam ends up run for 7 hours or more.

The benefits of scheduled flights are myriad, 4 trips to my frequent flyer account, double the miles and rights if things go wrong – though I was miffed when I found that flying on my own accord was almost EUR 400 more expensive than if I went by the included charter flight.

Besides, I am able to take up to 35kg as opposed to a paltry 20kg, that is just about enough for basic makeup and lip gloss.

So, I packed and weighed the stuff on a set of two scales, one digital the other analog and it came to 24kg, so I unpacked everything and struggled to jettison some stuff, it came down to 22kg on my contrived measuring system – it was in fact 24.5kg and I had to pay excess baggage to Transavia, a KLM company that KLM does not accord any flyer bonuses.

The way they get you to pay up is to ask if you want to jettison stuff at the check-in desk – how you could ever do that, I do not know, the suitcase alone is probably 8kg – I should have asked if I could have sealed mailbags.

My boarding pass was ripped up and I was given an invoice to pay up at a KLM window where I was issued with another boarding pass, but really, I could have just had it printed out at one of the terminals again – my suitcase was already on its way onto the plane.

For the witching hour

Did I say, my taxi picked me up at 2:00AM? I do not enjoy charter flights for all sorts of reasons and that is one of them – our flight was to take-off at 5:15AM and it was already airborne at 5:08AM – we were the second flight out of Schiphol.

My seat was on the second row, typical of when I travel on scheduled flights and I always have the window, a magazine or two and a Sudoku puzzle book, my Creative Zen Mozaic MP3 player was playing back the classical playlist as I settled down to a nap, a snore and the occasional jolt.

The seat belt was quite extended, the person who occupied it before me must have been wider than they were tall, but there was no heat from the last sitter.

Front row seats also have that unusual situation of being sparsely populated, the middle seat was unoccupied, and travelling Economy really did feel like I was travelling Business Class.

The man behind me must have been in his 60s but he fidgeted like a kid, banging at the back of my seat that I first gave his wife that look, she restrained him for a while and it continued, then I gave him that look and it stopped.

Observing people dropped off

On arrival at Las Palmas, at baggage collection you could see a study in bizarre human behaviour, I am no anthropologist but the baggage comes out on a conveyor belt meaning eventually no matter where you are stood along the 70 metres of conveyor belt, your baggage will eventually get to you, but they all bunch up that the starting point and wreak havoc on each other collecting their stuff.

I now arrange a personal transfer from the airport to the hotel because when we travelled on the coach we had a tour of all hotels in Maspalomas and Playa del Ingles until we are the last to be dropped off 75 minutes later.

I arrived at the hotel to the greeting – Welcome to your second home, Sir – it is my 4^th time at the Riu Palace Maspalomas Hotel and I am a creature of habit because the staff here have the habit of making my stay the complete absence of stress the epitome of ease.

The rooms are not that luxurious, I have been in bigger suites, but it is people that make hotels not the building – as I remember, when leaving home, the heavens were open with rain pouring down, I arrived at my second home and the heavens were open with rays of sunshine kissing my body and making me tan naturally.

It is too far away to think of the 25^th, I’ll just have a cocktail and put my feet up today.