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: 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!

Javier

He made it welcoming

As I arrived at the hotel, my name had not been forgotten, the chorus was – “Welcome to your second home”. I was glad to hear that, and everyone remembered as we reminisced over the past year.

I was last here in May 2009 and up till that time, I had spent 91 days in the previous 21 months in a Riu-brand hotel, 75 of them in this self-same hotel.

One person exemplified the continuing desire to return again and again, funny, self-deprecating, very attentive, extremely helpful almost to the point of reading your mind.

Got you to holiday

Anytime I entered the lobby to work on my laptop he threatened to seize it because he felt you don’t come to a hotel like this to work, you come for holidays and it was his duty to ensure you were on holiday not at work.

Likeable, affable, friendly, reliable and buzzing with initiative, he had that flow that showed that he enjoyed what he did and everyone just warmed to him for his enthusiasm and dedication – any employee would want to have his balance of creative flair, intuitive acumen and confident bearing as he switched between the six or so languages he spoke so fluently with customers who needed attention.

Pining to see him

I normally would have called ahead to inform him that I was arriving, and he would assure me that my usual room if available would be made ready – however, because everything was so last minute, I thought it was best not to put him under duress.

He usually does not work on Sundays but as I woke up this morning, I first went to the reception as if to see him, he was not there, so I made for breakfast and surmised that he probably was on holiday or was in the back office.

After breakfast, I had to ask after him, she said he was no longer with them, so I wondered if he had gone to another Riu establishment, she said no, I was unrelenting as I delved further.

He was a year younger; he probably saw the signs of my deteriorating health long before I noticed things were awry, I wanted to tell him that those blotches we had medical staff observe the last time I was here were the early stages of skin cancer and what I had been through.

He’d gone

I was so looking forward to shaking his hand, have him come round from the other side of the reception divide to give him a warm embrace as I gave the many others who remembered me.

Unfortunately, the more things look the same, the more you notice the change, she would not tell me much more, it was too difficult for her to talk about. Even I do not know much else as to why, when and what but I will not be seeing him again.

Javier Romero had died. Rest in peace, good friend.

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.

Singing like a Canary

Tempers, temperance & temperatures

After 18 days in the sun and rain with temperatures never bottoming 12 degrees Celsius on the worst day and sometimes cresting 33 degrees Celsius in January, it was time to return home.

To others, they might wonder about the wisdom of ditching a charter flight of 4 and a half hours and a group pickup that traverses every hotel in the dregs of Playa del Inglês before you are dropped last, exhausted and annoyed having arrived in Gran Canaria a good 3 hours before.

I ditched the wisdom for the convenience of sorts, I have to stop over in Madrid, the journey is 2 hours longer but you get picked up in your chauffeur-driven car for your return trip to the airport.

When it comes to holiday, comfort and convenience always trumps facility and commonality, I would pay for the convenience probably because I like to know I would be taken care of properly if things do not work out right and I would not have to raise my voice to have things sorted out.

Getting out Canarias, Keeping in Caribbean

I was picked up quite early this morning after bidding farewell to all the staff the day before, chief among whom is the chef de reception, Javier, whose administration of ease, comfort and convenience in service knows no peer.

The chauffeur then sold the Canary Islands to me again – for a third of the price I paid for visiting the Gran Canaria, I could have gone to any good sunny island in the Caribbean, stayed in the most exclusive 5-star hotels and lapped the white beach sands as if I was in paradise.

The paradise however is within the walls of the hotel resort where they can seem to guarantee your security, wander out of those hotel walls and you are swimming with sharks and giggling with barracudas.

The element of relative safety

You basically do not have the leeway and freedom that this European group of islands offers, I can get up at 3:00AM and walk up to any of the centres of entertainment with any fear – OK, I have seen the one opportunistic mugging but nothing that fills you with dread, fear, trembling and utter loathing.

I have never been to the Caribbean but I do not want a situation where I cannot get out and do stuff because I might come to some mishap or harm – it makes the carteras of the shopping precincts look really tame – you probably need that sort of thing to allow for a broad spread of human character in such a seemingly idyllic place. See links below about relative crime perception and statistics between the Caribbean and the Canaries.

Work begins again tomorrow and there are pictures to publish of the wonderful time I had in Gran Canaria for the 8^th time already. Maybe May and definitely December/January again, there might be a long haul to Asia too – in the mean time I need to gather my thoughts for the blogs incubating and ready to be hatched in writing very soon.

There is no doubt that I met some pretty interesting and nice people – all will be revealed in due course.

References

Law enforcement in the Canary Islands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Crime and the Caribbean -Times Online

Hotel Riu Palace Maspalomas

My guest book entry

I was disappointed to find out that my hotel did not have a guest comments book in which to praise the service, ambience and standard of the hotel.

They regularly conduct surveys managed by 3^rd-party agencies which serve their purpose but there is nothing like having a book to put down your thoughts and specifically mention people who have made your stay extremely wonderful.

The nearest guest commentary forum one can find for the hotel is probably the one in online at TripAdvisor.com – here, we find that of the 105 hotels reviewed by customers in Playa del Inglés, Riu Palace Maspalomas comes first.

First out of many

They come first for many reasons, for me it is like home away from home with every member of staff geared to provide you the maximum ease and the absence of stress or tension to make your stay wonderful.

It is down to the quality of service of the staff at reception where they would bend over backwards to serve, the concierges who have all information you require in at least 4 languages, the maître‘d at the restaurant who ensures every single whim and desire is catered for through waiters and waitresses who have a commitment to service and brings the utmost satisfaction.

It is impossible to have a complaint that cannot be seen to and sorted out before you have had time to complete your sentences about the issue.

Back again and again

It is my second time at this hotel, I was first here in September 2007 for 16 nights and now for 15 nights with this being my last night.

The staff can confidently tell you to come back again because before you leave you are already planning your return as well as informing others that there is no better place to be in Playa del Inglés than the Riu Palace Maspalomas hotel.

Its designation is 4 star, I am convinced it is more 5 star, but that is beside the point, these people have perfected the art of hospitality it is seamless in delivery and without peer in execution.

Home away from home

I am always glad to arrive in the comfort and care of the people who run this hotel and always saddened to realise my holiday is so soon over – I cannot leave without the promise of return.

It is so homely, I am known by name from afar, my needs are met with an excellence that has not been equaled in any other hotel I have stayed at and I have stayed in many hotels.

Mention should be made of Javier the day manager, whose affable, professional and courteous attention to all matters has no equal, you can chat to him about anything and expect that he has answers ready or will make things happen – he fully understands his guests and his latitude of initiative magnificent.

In the restaurant, Pepe and Elio are your men, they are knowledgeable, responsive, understanding and extremely friendly – they absorb your pains and give you such great delight – the food is made all that more wonderful by a service that you would be at pains to fault.

My verdict

If I cannot find a room in this hotel, I would not visit Gran Canaria.

One had to laugh when an old German couple who had been staying at this hotel for the past 8 years arrived one afternoon and tried to bump off other guests from a section of the pool by saying that was their place whenever they stayed at the hotel – whilst no one paid any attention to them, it is nice to know that this hotel can provide you a favourite and coveted place that you want to return to.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I commend to you Riu Palace Maspalomas, a most excellent hotel with the most exquisite service, your home away from home and a place once visited would keep you coming back.

Tenerife tomorrow arranged by staff so good

Hard graft planning

It has been drama, disappointment and delight trying to arrange a trip to Tenerife, only determination and the exquisite service of the staff at the Riu Palace Maspalomas saved the day.

On Thursday, I tried to arrange a trip through LastMinute excursions and there was no one at the other end of the phone to sort it out.

I then went to a tour arranger on Friday who struggled to make the arrangement only to find out that I could not travel on the days I wanted and had to wait a week.

When we finally got to the detail, they would not pick me up at my hotel and the pick-up time was set for 05:31 in the morning despite the fact that their brochure indicated 07:31 – I eventually gave up on that arrangement.

A basic trip round the island was also too difficult for them to setup; it made one wonder what business they were in.

Arranged but cancelled

So, I returned to my hotel reception where there concierge was able to setup the VIP Tour of the island for Saturday and the trip to Tenerife/Loro Parque for Tuesday – today.

I dropped my keys at reception on Monday well after 15:00, but when I returned, there was a note for me indicating the trip had been cancelled.

I was not impressed and this was supposed have been arranged by another outfit called Ultramar Express – we were go nowhere either slowly or by express by all accounts.

No one could tell why the trip had been cancelled, that is not to say that it was also going to be an early pick-up at 05:35 in front of my hotel.

In the face of all that, I would have been able to have an early breakfast and a late cold dinner when we returned, but it did not happen and so my story.

They offered a simple Loro Parque tour for Wednesday which would have been just as good as a day out to the zoo, I wanted more, so I cancelled.

Service I cannot only praise

The manager however agonised about how to help, at one time I had the idea of going for a night to Tenerife and I went to see a travel agent recommended by the hotel – the travel agent was busy fixing a new air-conditioner so could not do anything till the afternoon.

As I returned to the hotel, the manager had already spoken to a tour director to see if I could join one of their arrangements to Tenerife that includes the Loro Parque, in fact, all had been arranged and it only required my assent.

He had the cash and all the necessary stuff ready when he came to speak to me and offered to introduce me to the tour director in my own time. I immediately took up the offer and it was all done in less than 5 minutes.

New pickup time – 07:20 on Wednesday and the guarantee of a late dinner when we return at just before 22:00.

Staff this good

You cannot get staff this good in any place but where they are well paid, well catered for and recognised as assets to the company – there is no doubt that it is the staff that creates the opportunity for repeat visits to these luxurious establishments.

I am utterly delighted and pleased; I do not expect to hear the tour has been cancelled but then, let us not tempt fate.