Tenerife

One positive outcome of the horrendous 1/2 marathon I ran in October was that I picked up a race brochure for the Gran Canaria Maratón and Media Maratón.  A cheery bright yellow pamphlet featuring palm trees and runners in singlets and shorts, it was the only survivor when the drearier pamphlets for Berlin, Warsaw, Stockholm, and Oslo hit the recycling box.  

"I'd go to that." said Ed's dad, visiting drizzly Amsterdam from drizzly Seattle.

My right knee and Ed's apathy scuttled the running, but that didn't stop us from flying down to explore Tenerife for a week.

Key differences between Tenerife and Amsterdam in January:

Sunrise before 9 a.m.

Warm and arid.

Strange, lovely plants.

Strange, lovely birds.

Volcanoes.  Rocks.  Strata.

Day hikes on soft trails.

Altitude.

Low walls made of porous volcanic rocks, these are a few of my favorite walks...

Huge, windswept, barren, people-less panoramas.  You'll have to take my word for it.

We also went to the beach, ate far more cherna (either sea bass or grouper, so far as I can tell) over a 5-day period than is probably healthy, and bungled through Span-Dutch misshapen mash-ups like "esta avond" and saying "alsjeblieft" in place of "por favor".  I had as many tinto de verano's as I could order, and enthusiastically embraced the Spanish custom of coffee to cleanse the palate after every meal, and three times at breakfast.  I'm still recovering.

Some things remained the same...