As lovely as Norway is in the winter, G and I started to plan a little trip for the week after Christmas to somewhere a little...well, warmer, to put it bluntly. Okay, I know we would have to travel to coastal Africa or the Middle East in order to get really warm this time of the year, but at this point I'd even settle for 7 degrees Celsius and cloudy (I have a feeling it's going to be a long winter).
In our search for warmer climes, we were thinking of Madeira, or maybe the Canary Islands. We decided on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa. Several people recommended the islands, and I had heard it referred to as the "Hawaii of Europe." Tenerife is known for its great hiking around El Teide, the third largest volcano in the world (from its base) and a World Heritage Site. Getting there wasn't supposed to be a problem either. As long as we could get to Madrid, we were told, flights to the islands were bountiful and reasonably priced.
Excited about our adventure, I went to Nomaden yesterday, a cool travel shop in Oslo, and read through three or four Tenerife-specific guidebooks, and a hiking-specific guide for the island (note to readers: if you are planning to hike abroad in Europe, check out the Sunflower walking guides; these look excellent!). Satisfied with my purchases, I celebrated with lunch at Åpent Bakeri (yes, again) while reading about hiking on the island. I went home and researched flights for the third time, as well as hotels in Puerto de la Cruz, while I wait for G to get home so we could book our plane tickets. Enter the online ticket booking saga.
The trick was to book the two legs of the flight separately for the best deal. No problem, right? We found an unbelievably inexpensive flight to Madrid that didn't take 14 hours, and a seemingly perfect flight from Madrid to Tenerife that fit in well with our Oslo-Madrid flight. We booked the Oslo-Madrid flights with no problems. Then we tried to book the Madrid-Tenerife flights. The travel site did nothing. It kept refreshing every time we selected the flight we wanted, only showing more expensive flights. But, when we started from scratch with the search, the desired flight would show again. Weird, right? So we called them and...nada. Talk about a bait and switch. They said the flight was not available and tried to sell us one for almost ten times the amount we were trying to book.
So...as of this morning, we are going to Spain after Christmas. What we'll do after arriving is anyone's guess. Suggestions are welcomed and appreciated. We are thinking of going north to Barcelona and maybe trying to check out wine country around there. Sí? No? Will anything be open? Are there any awesome hotels or bodegas we should know about? Some hole in the wall restaurant we should check out? Do tell.
My ill-fated planning lunch at Åpent. At least I got a killer brie sandwich out of the deal, and some great loose herbal tea to try from a nearby tea shop.
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