I have lived in Spain now for more than 11 years, and a little while ago I realized that out of the 19 Spanish comunidades, or states, I only had 3 left: the Canary islands, La Rioja, and Melilla. So I decided to check one of them off the list (and of course, the other two will hopefully be in my near future).
The Canary islands are actually located off the coast Morocco, and there are seven: La Palma, El Hierro, La Gomera, Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and Gran Canaria, where I went. I chose Gran Canaria based on – I won’t lie to you – flight prices; I found round-trip tickets for 57 euros, roughly 60 dollars.
I had 3 full days there, in a nutshell, this is how I spent them: day 1 – beach, day 2 – beach + museums, day 3 – guided daytrip tour + beach. My Airbnb was right on the beach, a literal 30-second walk to the sand, which is exactly what I wanted. I left the balcony door open and fell asleep to the sound of the waves every night. It was perfect.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the capital city of the island and where I stayed, is divided into two parts: the beach part where I stayed, on one side of the peninsula, and the technical town center, with the town hall and cathedral and museums, on the other. It’s about a 25-minute bus ride from one to the other, so one afternoon I did just that. First I went to Casa de Colón, which featured an unfortunate exhibit on Columbus and his voyage on the bottom floor, but I went there for the art, which filled the whole upper floor. Then I went to the Museo Canaria, which was surprisingly…interesting. Normally I tend to avoid archeological-type museums (aka here are the clay bowls we found), but Museo Canario was focused on telling the stories of the Indigenous people who lived on the island before Europeans (the Spanish most likely), and who were all murdered, or killed by European diseases, around the same time as Columbus was “sailing the ocean blue” (large eye roll). It was fascinating, and the museum did a wonderful job portraying their homes – many of them lived in caves created on the mountainside for that purpose – and their life after death in the form of the mummies they left behind. If you ever find yourself in Las Palmas, I 100% recommend going there! Lastly, I stopped by the Plaza Mayor and cathedral to check them out, then headed to… you guessed, it the beach.
I did not want to leave the island without seeing more of it besides just the capital, so I went on a guided day tour to the extinct volcano in the middle of the island, then to the highest peak on the island, which also has a lookout point for taking pictures of the amazing views. Because the day was clear, we could see right to the water, and even past that to Tenerife and La Gomera! We also stopped at some villages for good measure, including Tejeda, San Mateo, and Teror.
As always, I had a wonderful time seeing the islands and taking some much-needed time to just relax. Until next time, which I will tell you, is also going to include an island or two… or six 😉