From the home of Canary Wharf to the Canary Islands

As part of the “catching up on our blog now that we've caught our breath” series, we will write a bit about our travels yesterday.

As you probably gathered from our previous post, Wednesday involved a lot of walking. We figured we'd even this out by taking other available modes of transportation on Thursday. We started the day by meeting Natasha's friend, Chris Allen, for a “proper” (i.e., fried) English breakfast in Crouch End, which is just down the hill from LMC.

We then took the Tube west to Notting Hill, which is the setting of a Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts movie of the same name, and is also home to the Portobello Road Market. Thursday was not market day, unfortunately, so we wandered around some less-than-bustling, but still quite charming, streets until we arrived at “The Travel Bookshop” which was where Hugh's character worked in the movie. We found a few good books, and then made our way back to Dora's place. We had a bite to eat, spent some time re-arranging our worldly belongings for the next part of our trip, and then headed off for our flight. We took the Tube to London Bridge, where we got on a commuter train to Gatwick Airport. We then hopped on a shuttle to get to the right terminal, and finally, at around 5:30, we got on our flight to Tenerife.

The flight itself was fairly uneventful – we watched an entertaining, mindless Will Ferrell movie (is there any other kind?), and dinner was actually pretty tasty – and we arrived in Tenerife shortly after 10:00. Yay for another stamp in our passports! We then caught a taxi and, after some wandering and halting conversation with our Spanish-speaking cabbie, arrived at Pensione Cassandra in the town of Buzanada, where we were staying for the night (our week at the time share in Costa Adeje didn't begin until the next day).

We were very relieved to finally be at our destination, until we realized that there was nobody at the pensione, and it was getting fairly late, past 11:00pm. So, we wandered around the streets of Buzanada, trying to find (ideally) the proprietor of the pensione or (more realistically) a payphone to call her from. Eventually, after more conversations with some friendly locals in our very basic Spanish, we found a phone at a bar a little ways up a hill, managed to reach someone (Cassandra herself, perhaps?), and were told that she'd be there in half an hour. So, we headed back down the hill and, after some more waiting outside the pensione, eventually got in and to our room shortly before midnight. Then it was time for some much anticipated, and needed, sleep.

*To read about Day 6, go here.
*To see pictures from Day 5, go here.