Noches en blanco

In November it was the time of the “Noches en blanco” – events where the whole city is celebrating the whole night with concerts, markets and workshops. It’s not only something existing in Spain, I also know it from France as “Nuit blanche”, but the one in my French host city I missed because I had to return to Germany before. At the 17thof November the Noche en blanco was in Puerto de la Cruz and already the day before one could see the large effort everyone was making in order to prepare the huts for the market and the stages and everything.

We decided to go there in a small group of girls, have something to eat and get around the city to see everything. We met at 8pm and went directly to a small Tapas restaurant in the heart of the city. After having enjoyed our food we went to Plaza de Charco and looked at all the nice handmade things the people were selling in their small huts. It was beautiful – clothes, accessories, bags, jewlery and so many more things. It took us a lot of time to see everything because the market was situated throughout the whole city. After a while everyone had found something nice and we had a drink in a small bar. While the others wanted to take part in a Salsa workshop that was held for free at Plaza de Charco, another girl and I decided to discover another part of the events and found some interesting food from all over the world. We tried several dishes and relaxed a bit next to the sea. When it started to get cold and we began to be tired, we finally returned to our apartments.

The week after that it was time for Noche en Blanco in the city La Laguna. I only knew the city from histories of other persons – I’d never managed to get there before, so I decided to come to that event with the others. La Laguna is about 30 minutes away from Puerto de la Cruz by bus, so we decided to have dinner in Puerto in a Mexican restaurant and take the bus to La Laguna afterwards. That’s what we did and finally we arrived in the city next to Santa Cruz.

As La Laguna is right next to the capital there were way more people than at the Noche Blanco in Puerto de la Cruz. The streets were full of cars and I was happy that we had come by bus – it would be horrible to look for a parking lot. We went to the city centre and passed by some nice concerts and workshops, but the others were looking for one special bar to have some drinks, so we hurried up a bit and arrived next to the bar. The city centre and the pedestrian’s zone was full of people and it was difficult to move. I would have never imagined to see so many people here! One couldn’t even see the market or other things prepared in the centre. When we wanted to enter the bar it was full already, as everything. All the people wanted to drink something as it was quite cold in La Laguna (always 5 degrees colder than in the rest of the island). So we couldn’t enter in that bar and in all the others we tried it was the same problem. I started to become a bit annoyed because everything we could do was walk around through the crowds, trying not to lose each other and freeze. We were hungry, but all the shops that sold food were crowded as well and we would have had to wait for hours. So we were walking through the city for (felt) hours until we found a small place that was not crowded. Happy, we entered and they really had a table for us! We had some terrible sandwiches but at least something to eat and stayed there for a while in order to get warm again.

After our horrible dinner we met some other people from Puerto that had come later by bus and walked around a bit more. We still had to wait some time until there would be another bus home to Puerto de la Cruz, so we went to a concert (also crowded) and to another one until we finally went to the bus station. But because it wasn’t coming for some reason we finally decided to share a taxi, because we were 7 people and it was about 35 euros, so that wouldn’t be too much and faster as well. The taxi arrived quickly and we were all happy to be on our way back again – there had been just too many people to make it an event to enjoy. I preferred events like the Noche en blanco in Puerto de la Cruz were it wasn’t too crowded and one could enjoy the atmosphere and see the markets and everything. But La Laguna was too famous and too easy to reach. So I was happy to be back in Puerto and just fell into my bed after that exhausting night.  

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