Flashback. It’s mid-February. I wake up to the soothing jingle of Sencha as my phone vibrates on the floor. I reach out and shut off the alarm, bidding a hurried goodbye to Kate Upton and Giselle before I open my eyes. Before I can get up to open my shutters, the thrum of water on my balcony reaches my ears. My feet are cold against the floor, and as my eyes focus in the light, my fears are confirmed. Rain, again. But then my phone buzzes once more. It’s Sharanya.

I just added the weather for Tenerife to my weather app and all next week it’s a high of 72

This is a great decision

I look out the window once more, watching puddles shimmer on the street below. This is a great decision.

Flash forward to last week. We leave for Tenerife on Wednesday. Another text from Sharanya, with a screenshot of the weather in El Médano, the beach town we’re going to.

……..oh

Rain. Tenerife. All weekend. Great.

We got lucky.

Aside from a quick sprinkle (best described as a puka shower, if that means anything to you), the forecast was wrong. And so, in celebration of some Spanish holiday that I didn’t catch the name of but apparently results in a five-day-weekend, Sharanya and I were in Tenerife. To save you a Google, Tenerife is the biggest of the Canary Islands. And to save you a further Google, oh geographically challenged reader, the Canaries are a cluster of Spanish islands just west of Morocco.

You might not know it, though, just by walking into the airport. Every sign contains as much Spanish as it does German, and for every Cien Montaditos outlet in the terminal, there’s also a Brat Stop or Kielbasa Korner or Sauerkraut Station or — okay, I’ll stop. Point being, Tenerife turns out to be a huge holiday destination for Brits and old fat Germans, as we would soon find out.

For all the self-indulgent writerly buildup, there’s not a terrible amount to say about our vacation spot in Tenerife itself. El Médano is a sleepy little beach town on the south coast with more windsurfing shops than restaurants. Marco, our Airbnb host who spoke English with delightfully British affectations, insisted that El Médano was one of the less touristy spots on the island despite the large number (and volume) of middle-aged mainlanders we saw. We can neither confirm nor deny his statement because we were too busy laughing at the Tenerife bus system’s unfortunate name — TITSA — to actually get on a bus to any other town. But that was alright because we had everything we needed already: a beach, cans of guava and soursop juice, and thirteen episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix.

So we hit the beach in the mornings, and when it threatened to rain we retreated to our Airbnb to drink juice and take excessively long naps. Then in the evenings we ventured into town to get dinner and wonder how all these tourists could have brought their dogs to the island when Ryanair wouldn’t even let us bring any of the cash in our wallets. Also one night we made Mexican food in our apartment and it was excellent, in case anyone is looking for a couple of low budget replacements for the taco truck guy.

In the odd moments when we weren’t gorging ourselves on tacos and Tina Fey jokes, we explored a bit of Tenerife’s excellent nature. We climbed a little mountain (it should be pointed out that Tenerife has a 12'000-plus foot volcano, but we couldn’t see it the entire time because most of the island was under clouds…which seems kind of weird in retrospect), did some tidepooling, and went paddleboarding, all of which involved a higly agreeable amount of Sharanya falling.

Our paddleboard excursion was much needed, since it’s now been more than seven months since I got to paddle anything except a dinky rowboat in Retiro and a couple of pledges in the frat I founded. Although I probably should have expected it, there were a few notable differences in the rental process between El Médano and Sea Trek:

Sea Trek: check that customers are parked in approved spaces, direct customers to changing rooms, fill out waivers, lock up valuables, distribute PFDs, fit PFDs, size paddles, distribute paddles, direct customers to restrooms, perform safety talk, recommend paddling destinations, bring boards/boats to water, fit customers to boards/boats, give paddling instruction, test paddling skills, answer questions, pray that customers don’t get blown to Tiburon…

El Médano: distribute paddles, suggest that paddlers don’t go “over that way” while waving vaguely at water, stare blankly, return to smoking cigarette and chatting up babes…

Non-Madrid City Rankings, 3/25 Edition:

1. Amsterdam
2. Zurich
3. Barcelona
4. Berlin
5. Copenhagen
6. San Sebastian
7. Sevilla
8. Prague
9. Santiago de Compostela (and the Galician coast)
10. Granada (/Albuñuelas/Salobreña)
11. Paris
12. Lisbon
13. El Médano (still a perfectly good place to go to the beach, which is more than Belgium can offer)
14. Bruges

Incomplete: Brussels