So maybe England isn't punishing me

Because look at the pretty things it's doing! Today was warmer and sunnier and so I could actually face going outside. And I filed my taxes. Oh yeah, I am ooooone who files her taxes, especially since it should result in money coming back to me, which I am always for.




So here's the first vacation story. Our plane landed at the Las Palmas airport and we got to walk down the steps right off the plane like 40s movie stars, only the second the warmth and hot air and blue sky and ocean hit me I sort of couldn't move, and I just stood there with my eyes closed and my head back, crooning, "Aw yeah, see . . . this is better . . . " until the person behind me smacked me in the knees to get me going.

We eventually ended up on the Thomas Cook bus, heading off for destinations unknown. We did allocation on arrival so we didn't know where we would be staying. On the bus they told us we'd be at El Cardonal. "Okay," I thought, "that could be posh." We drove and drove and suddenly weren't actually driving along the ocean anymore, but were instead going through this really crowded neighborhood with narrow streets and loitering boys and full dumpsters.

My thought: "Man, I feel sorry for whatever loser is staying here."
Goldy's thought: "Wow, somebody's staying in a crap hotel."

Or maybe they were switched, I don't remember. The bus stopped right next to this tiny building with big barbed-wire-topped fences, and we saw the sign by the entrance: El Cardonal.

And then the guide called out the name of the hotel, and Goldy and I were the only two people who got up, because I guess everyone else was staying in nice places by the beach. We slunk off the bus with our eyes down while everyone stared at us, wondering why in the world we'd picked some crappy place like that.

Only it ended up being just fine. It wasn't near the beach, but there was a free shuttle that took us down to the Maspalomas beach, and we were near a bus stop. It was a 2-star place with little bungalows squeezed tightly together. The walls were about a millimeter thick, though, so all that first night we kept waking up when the people 8 bungalows down came home because we thought they were actually trying to get into our house to murder us in our beds. Also someone possibly flayed alive a cat outside the bedroom window, and then we found a big spider. But other than that it was nice. Most of the guests were British, I think, judging from the part where the pool bar served full English and Scottish breakfasts and the lobby television had things like Coronation Street and Eastenders and Robbie Williams music videos on.

Here are some pictures.