Tenerife Spring Break: Part 1 Beach Time!

 

For Spring Break this year we flew to Tenerife, Spain, which is in the Canary Islands.  We rented this small apartment just a few blocks from Playa de las Americas.

 

It worked fine, though ti was a bit tight for the six of us and the room that Rob and I shared had a LOT of noise from the nearby walking path through the night.  (A lot of partiers stumbling home at 3 am!)

 

During the day though, the walking path was a fantastic traffic free route to walk to the beachfront. We headed there as soon as we were done checking in.

 

It was early evening and quiet.  Really lovely. 

 

The first beach we visited was a black pebble beach with a strong current.  It wasn't a great place for little kids to swim, but we enjoyed watching the surfers, wading,

 

and collecting sea glass.

 

This Saturday was also the first day of General Conference, so we brought along the tablet and watched an hour each evening before bed all week.  Amelie and Jacob usually fell asleep from their busy days within the first ten minutes, but that's okay.

 

I'm glad they had so much fun this week, and it made watching Conference much quieter for the rest of us.

 

In the morning we headed back to the beach, but headed to a different one that had black sand.  This ended up being our favorite beach we tried all week.

 

The sand was so fine and warm, and the breakers along the edge of the coast meant there were still waves, but they were small and manageable for the little ones.  Amelie is our sand crab, she loves the water, but even more she loves just rolling around in the sand.

 

I seriously do not understand the appeal, but she loves it.

 

When the tide was low, we liked walking out on the stone breakers and watching the real crabs out there scurry around.  They are so well camouflaged, that you can't even see them in this photo.

 

Digging holes is a favorite beach pastime for our boys.  The deeper, the better.

 

We spent all day on the beach this day. I walked to Subway to pick up lunch at lunchtime, and on the way back to the apartment before dinner we stopped for ice creams and slushies. We all got some sunburn this day, despite applying spf 50 sunscreen, but we were all tired and happy too.