Where are ll the Christmas Markets?

As we had not had so much success in La Laguna with looking for Christmas presents, the other intern and I wanted to see if Tenerife has to offer some nice Christmas Markets. We asked some colleagues where to go and one told us that there was a market in Santa Cruz in the city centre. So at the weekend we took the bus to Santa Cruz as we had already done so many times and after 30 minutes we arrived at the bus station.

It was a nice day with a lot of sunshine and we went directly into the city centre to look for something to eat. Because we didn’t want to have the same problem as the week before with our lunch in La Laguna, we visited the Tapas Restaurant OLYMPO at Plaza de Espana. We’d been there many times already and always loved the food there. The waiter already knows us and is really funny when he sees that we have come another time. So we had wonderful tapas, such as squid with champignons and garlic, fried squid with peanut sauce, garlic bread, mini hamburger and avocado fish bruschetta. After a small ice cream as dessert, we asked the waiter if he knew something about a Christmas market nearby, because on our way to the city centre we hadn’t seen any hint for such a market. He looked a bit confused and told us that there has never been a real Christmas Market in Santa Cruz. We were disappointed because the only reason we had come to the capital was that we wanted to look for original Christmas presents for our friends and family..

But as we didn’t want to spend the whole day looking for a market that obviously wasn’t existing, we decided to walk up the pedestrians’ zone in the centre and look in the shops for Christmas presents. We didn’t find that much but anyway, there were some small nice things – the same as in La Laguna. After having visited the most important shops in the centre, we continued our tour to a shopping centre nearby, called “Meridiano”. It is quite large with a lot of different shops, many of them also existing in Germany and other countries of Europe. We found some more things (most of them not for others but for ourselves, of course) and relaxed a bit in the sun at the rooftop of the building. I was still impressed by the beautiful weather at that time of the year – it was already December and one could still be outside in trousers and t-shirt!

After a while we decided to walk back to the bus station and return to Puerto de la Cruz, we were both tired of all the walking and wanted to relax a bit. The bus back was always exhausting because most of the time we were too late to take the express bus and had to go by the one which stopped at almost every small village on the ways. As we had eaten a lot we both started to feel a bit sick because of all the stop and go, and were happy when we finally left the bus at our destination. I had to go to the grocery store quickly, and then I finally returned and was happy to have some time to relax.

The next day I actually didn’t want to do anything – Sunday I was quite lazy most of the time. But as I only had a bit more than two months I wanted to see some more things of the city I was living in, and so I decided to visit Taoro Parque, a large park in Puerto de la Cruz about which they told me that it was very beautiful. I asked the other intern if she wanted to come with me, and so we met after lunch at the entrance of the park. As every place in Puerto (except the beach) one had to walk up many stairs – many, many stairs. We were both still tired of the day before and it wasn’t funny to walk up all that way. But after a while we had an amazing view over the city. Fortunately, there was no sunshine that day and it wasn’t too hot.

When we had enjoyed the view we continued our way through the park. It wasn’t as beautiful as I had thought, most of the fountains weren’t working and the hotel in the middle of the park was closed and looked abandoned and sad. But we found some other places that were more beautiful and enjoyed our time in the park. As my friend had to go to meet someone afterwards, we had a coffee somewhere and then we both walked home. I was happy that I had seen another part of the city and relaxed the rest of the weekend. I didn’t want to work anymore, time passed so slowly because we had hardly anything to do, and I was looking forward to seeing my family and friends at Christmas.

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