I visited Tenerife in 1989 and stayed in the tourist resort of Los Christianos near Playa de Los Americas in a hotel complex called the Parque Santiago. One day I took a coach tour to the Teide National Park. It wasn’t a long trip in terms of kilometres but the bus left early because it happens to be an awfully long way to climb to the top.
Posted in Beaches, Childhood, Europe, Food, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Life, Los Christianos, Mount Teide, Tenerife, Volcano
From literally anywhere in Naples Vesuvius stands threateningly close by, like a loaded gun pointed at the heart of the city…
Even eggheads find it difficult to be absolutely precise about this but scientists think that Vesuvius formed about twenty-five thousand years ago and today the volcano is rated as one of the most dangerous in the world – not because of its size but because of the proximity of millions of people living close by and if it was to go off again with a similar eruption to the one that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. then it is estimated that it could displace up to three million people who live in and around the city of Naples.
The volcano has a major eruption cycle of about two thousand years so the next eruption is dangerously imminent.
I visited the top of the Volcano in 1976.
Posted in Europe, Food, History, Italy, Literature, Natural Environment, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Campania, Herculaneum, Italy, Mark Twain Vesuvius, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, Vesuvio, Vesuvius, Vesuvius 1944, Vesuvius 79 AD, Vesuvius Disaster, Vesuvius Eruption, Vesuvius National Park, Vesuvius Postcards, Vesuvius red zone, Volcano
“…when the sun burst through the morning mists and fired this tinted magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled crown!” , Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
In 1976 I visited Sorrento in Italy. The currency was the Lira and the notes were so worthless (I seem to remember that the smallest denomination was 1,000) that it was normal practice for shops to give change in the form of a postcard.
One day I went to Mount Vesuvius and came back with these to add to my collection.
My personal favourite…
“…when the sun burst through the morning mists and fired this tinted magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled crown!” – Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
Planet Earth is just like a human being – when it becomes angry it gets to shout its mouth off!
On the next day we were back on the road with a half day trip to nearby Mount Vesuvius which is an active stratovolcano situated to the east of Naples. I am being deliberately specific here because what that means technically and geologically is that it is a tall, conical shaped volcano composed of many layers of hardened lava and volcanic ash laid down over the centuries by all of the many previous eruptions.
Or, if you don’t like Vesuvius here are some other Volcano Visits:
About this time of the year I start to look back over my posts to review what has been going on. One of the things that I like to do is to take a look at the search questions that seem to bring web-surfers by the site and take a look at some of the more bizarre and unusual.
One of my most successful posts is about the day I attended a Buckingham Palace Garden Party and I get lots of odd Google referrals about this one. This year my favourite just has to be – “do I get expenses to attend royal garden party?”
Let me take a moment here to explain. Just to be invited to a Buckingham Palace Garden party is a bit special in itself and believe me there is going to be a lot of expense involved – new suit, new outfit, overnight stay in London, taxi fares etc. and most people would gladly deal with this just to be part of the occasion so I have to say that expecting the Queen to pick up the bill sounds rather republican to me and whoever asked this should not have had an invite in the first place.
Next up, I really like this one – “what did the captain wear on the Titanic?”
I visited Belfast recently and went to see the Titanic Exhibition and Museum. It was a super place and I recommend anyone to go there and I think what I learned on that visit may just well help here.
Around the exhibition there are lots of pictures of Captain Smith in his White Star Line uniform so I am forced to conclude that except when he went to bed and most likely put on a pair of pyjamas that this was his favourite form of dress. Another thing that I can be certain of is that Captain Smith didn’t wear a lifebelt because after the Titanic struck the iceberg he went down with his ship and drowned!
This being a Travel Blog I often get advice requests and this year I have picked out these two related topics – “What to do in Croatia if it rains?” and “Will I need my umbrella in Burgos?” I am not a weather expert of course but then neither are most of the people who claim to be – has anyone ever seen an accurate TV weather forecast? Bearing this in mind my answer to both these questions is find somewhere to shelter and then let me remind everyone – it doesn’t rain in bars.
When I travel to Europe I rather like hiring cars but what I don’t like is the hassle of arranging car insurance. I have had a lot of trouble getting past the car rental clerk and taking possession of the keys so I am well able to answer this next one – “how much is gravel protection and sand and ash protection in Iceland” and the answer is quite a lot, probably more than the daily hire rate for the vehicle.
Sixt in Iceland have come up with a brilliant wheeze. I thought that I had purchased fully comprehensive insurance but the desk clerk told me that cars suffered so many stone chips because of the gravel roads in Iceland that this had now been excluded and could be purchased at an additional cost of €9 a day under the description ‘gravel damage’ and just to be safe I agreed to buy it.
Then it became almost surreal when he explained that further cover was available at €10 a day for volcano damage. Volcano damage – WTF?
Upon enquiry he told me that if a volcano explodes it can generate enough heat to strip the paint off the car and that this was not covered either. Well, I considered this for a moment and came to the conclusion that if I was close enough to an exploding volcano for it to strip the paint off the car then it was almost certain that I was likely to be in a lot of trouble and great personal danger and the last thing that I was going to be worried about as my flesh melted into a puddle of grease was the condition of the paintwork on the hire car (gravel chipped or not) so I sensibly declined the offer to purchase the additional cover and quickly paid up just in case he next tried to sell me snow or rain insurance in case the car got wet!
I can always guarantee something cropping up about Ryanair and cheap flights.
I first wrote on this subject in 2009 and it immediately started getting hundreds of hits and then in 2011 it just stopped completely. I reviewed and reposted it and changed the title from the specific ‘Travel Tips when Flying Ryanair’ to the more general title that it has now and hey presto the hits started coming again. – Travel Tips when Flying Budget Airlines.
My favourite this year is “Ryanair seat 08f” which, to be honest is way to specific a request for me to be able to deal with and provide a satisfactory response.
Sex always crops up of course because it is estimated that well over half of all web searches are about this subject. This is an odd one though – “penis shaped door knob”, who for goodness sake is likely to type that enquiry into a search engine? Interestingly however I once worked with someone who used the office internet to make the enquiry ‘knobs and knockers’. She was restoring an old Welsh Dresser at the time and although her enquiry was completely innocent she had some explaining to do to the IT section when she received the unexpected results of her search.
Not being an anatomist I am not an authority on penises and not being a manager of a Home Depot I am not an expert on door furniture of any shape but I did visit the Penis Museum in Reykjavik and this is probably close enough to have recorded the visit to the blog.
I am going to finish with this one and because I simply do not have the answer I am going to ask you all out there if you can help – “Does a dog die if it doesn’t have sex?”
Here are the previous posts in this series of weird internet searches…
Posted in Europe, History, Iceland, Natural Environment, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Þingvellir National Park, Culture, Eyjafjallajokull, Life, Northern Lights, Postcards, Reyjkavik, Volcano
Posted in Beaches, Cathedrals, Europe, History, Hotels, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Life, Los Christianos, Mount Teide, Tenerife, Volcano
I visited Tenerife in 1989 and stayed in the tourist resort of Los Christianos near Playa de Los Americas in a hotel complex called the Parque Santiago. One day I took a coach tour to the Teide National Park. It wasn’t a long trip in terms of kilometres but the bus left early because it happens to be an awfully long way to climb to the top.
The summit of Mount Teide at just over three thousand, seven hundred metres is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic. At 7,500 m from its base on the ocean floor, it is the third highest volcano in the world (but do bear in mind that half of it is underwater) and its altitude makes Tenerife the tenth highest island in the world (although to be fair this is another of those biggest, largest, highest statistics to be wary of). It remains active and its most recent eruption occurred in 1909. The United Nations Committee for Disaster Mitigation designated Teide what they call a Decade Volcano because of its history of destructive eruptions and its proximity to several large towns.
The coach entered the national park with its eerie moon like landscape of twisted rocks and strange formations (so eerie that they shot some scenes for the film ‘Planet of the Apes’ here) and growled and wheezed its way up the narrow road towards the summit as the overworked engine and gearbox complained noisily all the way to the top.
About two-thirds of the way up we entered the clouds and a thick fog clung to the sides of the coach like a damp dish-cloth, the windows clouded over on the inside and ran with water on the outside and I began to wonder if I might have wasted my money because there was nothing to see but through an impenetrable mist that hung like grey shrouds on the windows.
Luckily the driver seemed to know where he was going and negotiated his way around the hairpin bends on the way to the summit to a coach park about three hundred metres from the top of the one thousand, three hundred metre high crater. This was as far as it could go but there was still a considerable way to walk up a dusty path of loose volcanic ash and clinker so it was a good job that we had taken the pre-excursion advice to wear stout shoes and suitable clothing.
Even the climb didn’t get us to the very top but only as far as a cable-car station because the only way to the summit was by mechanical means. While I waited my turn to be ushered into the gondola I had my photograph taken with a girl in local costume who, after a full morning shift, looked suitably bored and uninterested and then I was inside the red and cream cab which left the station and immediately started to sway in the stiff wind as it began the final ascent over the yawing black crater below.
Several people couldn’t bear to look because it was indeed a long way down into the black void of the massive jagged crater and the cable car creaked and groaned as it made its agonising ten minute journey. Eventually we could see the top but there was one last panic as the car passed over the final pylon and swung dramatically back and forth before it steadied itself again and came to rest at the summit station. I understand that the cable car and the gondolas have since been overhauled and replaced and that it is a lot less scary now.
Apart from the great views there wasn’t really a great deal to see at the top except for the great yawning crater and a big hole full of rocks waiting to blow up again sometime soon. I suppose the point of going to the top of Teide is simply to say you have been there and not because there is anything special to see. In the sunshine the colours however were fascinating, the rocks were black, brown, purple and umber and all over there was scraggy green vegetation stubbornly clinging on to life in a highly improbable location.
There were little wisps of smoke and every so often a smell of sulphur and a little bit of steam drifting across the path just to remind us that this was a living and active volcano. At the top an old man demonstrated how hot the rocks were by lighting a cigarette by bending down and igniting it on the rocks. I think he must have got through a lot of cigarettes in a day and we were all impressed with this and left a small contribution in his collection pot but I have always wondered subsequently if it was some sort of trick.
Eventually it was time to return and after I had collected my certificate and photograph with the girl who couldn’t smile to confirm that I had been to the top of the volcano the coach made its way back down the mountain, wearing out a set of brake pads on the way and after a stop at a banana plantation to buy some rather unpleasant tasting liqueur concoction I was back in Los Christianos with tales of my volcano adventure which were of secondary importance to my travelling companions holiday early evening dining preference…
The fact that there was a McDonalds there was one of the things that put me off ever going back to Tenerife.
Posted in Beaches, Europe, Food, History, Hotels, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Life, Los Christianos, Mount Teide, Tenerife, Volcano
“…when the sun burst through the morning mists and fired this tinted magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled crown!” Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
In 1974 I visited Sorrento in Italy. The currency was the Lira and the notes were so worthless (I seem to remember that the smallest denomination was 1,000) that it was normal practice for shops to give change in the form of a postcard.
One day I went to Mount Vesuvius and came back with these to add to my collection.
The “Twelve Treasures of the Kingdom of Spain” was a contest/poll that was conducted by the Spanish Television Company Antena 3 and the radio broadcaster Cope. The final results were announced on 31st December 2007. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the eight out of the twelve that I have visited. Sixth in the competition and the first of two natural landscape finalists was Mount Teide on the Atlantic Ocean island of Tenerife.
I visited Tenerife in 1989 and stayed in the tourist resort of Los Christianos near Playa de Los Americas and one day took a coach tour to the Teide National Park. It wasn’t a long trip in terms of kilometres but the bus left early because it happens to be an awfully long way to climb to the top.
The summit of Mount Teide at just over three thousand, seven hundred metres is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic. At 7,500 m from its base on the ocean floor, it is the third highest volcano in the world and its altitude makes Tenerife the tenth highest island in the world (although to be fair this is another of those biggest, largest, highest statistics to be wary of). It remains active: its most recent eruption occurred in 1909 from the El Chinyero vent on the north-western Santiago rift. The United Nations Committee for Disaster Mitigation designated Teide what they call a Decade Volcano because of its history of destructive eruptions and its proximity to several large towns.
The coach entered the national park with its eerie moon like landscape of twisted rocks and strange formations and wheezed its way up the narrow road towards the summit as the engine complained all the way to the top. About two-thirds of the way up we entered the clouds and a thick fog clung to the sides of the coach like a damp dish-cloth, the windows clouded over on the inside and ran with water on the outside and I began to wonder if I might have wasted my money because there was nothing to see but through an impenetrable mist that hung like grey shrouds on the windows.
Luckily the driver seemed to know where he was going and negotiated his way around the hairpin bends on the way to the summit to a coach park about three hundred metres from the top of the one thousand, three hundred metre high crater. This was as far as it could go but there was still a considerable way to walk up a dusty path of loose volcanic ash and clinker so it was a good job that we had taken the pre-excursion advice to wear stout shoes and suitable clothing.
The track would almost certainly not have met current health and safety regulations because there was very little to stop careless people slipping and falling over the edge and tumbling down the mountain because every so often the track had slipped away down a massive vertical drop and occasionally had been propped up with a few bits of insufficient wood held together with scraps of string. I understand that it is a lot safer now however.
Even the climb didn’t get us to the very top but only as far as a cable-car station because the only way to the summit was by mechanical means. While I waited my turn to be ushered into the gondola I had my photograph taken with a girl in local costume who, after a full morning shift, looked suitably bored and uninterested and then I was inside the blue and white cab which left the station and immediately started to sway in the stiff wind as it began the final ascent over the yawing black crater below.
Several people couldn’t bear to look because it was indeed a long way down into the black void of the massive jagged crater and the cable car creaked and groaned as it made its agonising ten minute journey. Eventually we could see the top but there was one last panic as the car passed over the final pylon and swung dramatically back and forth before it steadied itself again and came to rest at the departure point.
Apart from the great views there wasn’t really a great deal to see at the top except for the great yawning crater and a big hole full of rocks waiting to blow up again sometime soon. I suppose the point of going to the top of Teide is simply to say you have been there and not because there is anything special to see. In the sunshine the colours however were fascinating, the rocks were black, brown, purple and umber and all over there was scraggy green vegetation clinging on to life in a highly improbable location.
There were little wisps of smoke and every so often a smell of sulphur and a little bit of steam drifting across the path just to remind us that this was a living and active volcano. At the top an old man demonstrated how hot the rocks were by lighting a cigarette by bending down and igniting it on the rocks. I think he must have got through a lot of cigarettes in a day and we were all impressed with this and left a small contribution in his collection pot but I have always wondered subsequently if it was some sort of trick.
Eventually it was time to return and after I had collected my certificate to confirm that I had been to the top of the volcano the coach made its way back down the mountain, wearing out a set of brake pads on the way and after a stop at a banana plantation to buy some rather disgusting liqueur concoction I was back in Los Christianos with tales of my volcano adventure which were of secondary importance to my travelling companions holiday early evening dining preference…
Posted in Europe, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Canary Islands, Culture, Life, Los Christianos, Mount Teide, Tenerife, Volcano
Have Bag, Will Travel 