TransAtlantic Disney Magic Cruise – Tenerife!

Lynn writes: We’re home ! What a great trip ! We had mostly beautiful weather, very unlike the Eastbound trip.

As you know, I had hoped to really blog daily, but our internet connection was really bad and there were numerous problems.

So, without further delay, here is Tenerife!

August 24, 2007

Tenerife is our last port until Castaway Cay, 7 days from now. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands at 790 square miles. We are docked at Santa Cruz which is the capital. Santa Cruz is not usually a vacation destination and I like that the shops and bars aren’t real “touristy”.

Our shore excursion today is “The Tenerife Wine Experience“. Yea you’ve figured out the pattern to our shore experiences haven’t you.

Our tour guide today is Katherine and our driver is Israel. On the way to our first stop we learned a little bit about the island and the history of it’s vineyards. The center piece and highest point of Tenerife is Canadas del Tiede the third largest volcano on Earth.

The North side of the island is very lush and fertile the south side is desert like. Obviously all of the agriculture is on the North side. Christopher Columbus stopped here on his way to discover America and it became an important stop on the trade route to the new world. Because of a lack of disease the grapevines here have been in existence since the 16th century.

We have two stops today the first of which is Casa Del Vino, La Baranda a government facility and wine museum.

Although they referred to this facility as a winery I didn’t see any evidence of actual wine production. We have a great view of the volcano and surrounding village and sea, and took some great pictures.

The building itself is built around a central courtyard and houses several tasting room, and a small banquet facility. After a visit to the museum we had a taste of three wines a white, rose, and a red. These were pretty basic wines and they ran out of the red before I got a glass, that’s okay though because I had a taste of Paul’s glass and it taste a lot like an ashtray. We didn’t buy anything here but I did find a winery cat who was friendly enough to pose for pictures and let me pet her. This is the longest I’ve been away from our two kitties and I’m starting to miss them.

Our next stop was fairly close by, a private facility where we were having tapas and wine without the history lesson. Alvaro Bodega is in a very old building right in the middle of a city block. This is a much smaller facility than the one’s we visited in Barcelona and Jerez.

At Alvaro Bordega we were ushered into a back room with wine barrels lining the walls, and many many wine bottles lining the walls above them. The center of each table had a glass tree and several bottles of wine, so we were able to help ourselves they had the usual white, red and rose and they also had an apple wine infused with herbs and a muscatal.

For tapas we had the local wrinkled potatoes, which we very small potatoes baked with salt on the skin and a spicy red sauce to dip them in. Along with those we had several breads with various meats and cheeses. They later came around and poured us each a glass of sparkling cava. We had plenty of time to shop here and this is where I bought most of my souvenirs and wine to drink on the ship, I also bought my requisite bottle of rum to add to the collection at home that we never drink. I also bought a couple of things for my sister Cindy for taking care of our cats while we’re gone.

On the way back to the ship we passed the local opera house it looks a lot like a ship under full sail.

When we got back to the ship several of us weren’t ready for the tapas tour to stop.
Eleven of us met up back out on the dock half an hour later, we had gotten directions from our tour guide to the local tapas bars, a church tower was our landmark.

We headed off through some construction and eventually found our way to a pedestrian street with several restaurant/bars. We had two people with us who spoke Spanish, and while they were interpreting the menus and asking prices we ran into David, who had been our Disney guide for our excursion. He joined us bringing our group to twelve.

The first place we stopped at was overwhelmed by such a large group of Americans, the waitress took about half of our drink orders and disappeared. Finally one of the Spanish speaking girls went inside to ask, they said our table was too big we needed to split up into groups of two. So we got up and went right across the street where one of our party had already talked to the bartender, she was great, seated us all at the bar made us some terrific sangria and gave us olives to munch on. Yum.

Our next stop was a block off the main eating area and was a tiny little place with only the owner doing all of the serving. There were two tables available and all three barstools were open (the bar was that small) One of our group jumped behind the bar with the owner and started taking drink and food orders. We had loaves of warm bread fresh out of the oven a plate of thinly sliced ham and cheese, and a salad with tomatoes, peaches, olives, onion, and bean sprouts in olive oil.

This was a fabulous meal, and the owner was glad to have us, he even gave us several free posters from the local Spring festival of the cross, Santa Cruz means holy cross. From there we found a shopping area and began to split up. Paul and I walked around, found a post office to mail some postcards, dropped into a couple of local bars, where they didn’t speak English but they understood cervesa. And they’re so cheap here! We had two half pints for 2.50 Euros, about $3.50.

We wanted to get back to the ship in time to see the 6:30 show, tonight it’s Jim Brickman! Jim Brickman is a pianist who I became aware of a couple of years ago when he did an album of Disney music. I love his work and am very excited to get to see him. I knew he had been on the Eastbound crossing and I had my fingers crossed that he would be on this one. Disney flew him in just for this one nights shows then flew him back home again.

We got there early enough to get front row seats and it was a fantastic show, he told us a little bit about himself and his work and had a couple of vocalist from the stage shows come out and do some songs with him. I wish now I had gone back to see the second show.

After all that tapas we’d had through out the day we decided to skip dinner and went to hangout in the Rainforest Room in the Vista Spa instead. Sail away that night was really pretty with all of the lights of Tenerife along the water and up the mountainside. And ..fireworks! They were set off from a lower elevation and you could see them against the city lights.

Here’s a Fuel Barge alongside the Disney Magic.

Tonight we set our clocks back another hour and head for home.

Lynn

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