My Week in Lanzarote

It has been almost a week since my seven-night break in sunny, but windy, Lanzarote. We stayed in the southern most point of Lanzarote in Playa Blanca meaning 'white beach'. That name is ironic since there are hardy any white beaches in Playa Blanca but that is a story for later on in this blogpost.

We left at 8:30 on Monday morning in the middle of a typical English thunderstorm. Perfect July and flying weather. We had delays getting to Gatwick because of the traffic along the motorways but it only took an extra twenty minutes or so. When we got to Gatwick and eventually found the check in, there was an hour delay there because as a 'budget airline' nobody rushed to open check-in, and when it finally opened, only three check in desks were open for a plane load of people. Thank our lucky stars we were quite near the front of the queue but I still don't feel sorry for the people who were right at the very back... We had a booking for the lounge before we flew and even that was a struggle. The lounge had let people in who paid on the door and they let too many people in so the people who had booked in advance (us) had no seats when we got there. The terminal was absolute chaos because several planes had been delayed so it was absolutely crowded full of annoying people. Great.

The flight went as well as any flight I have been on even though it was a budget airline and was delayed half an hour because of the weather. I managed to vlog take off, some of the flight and landing which was fun and did some editing of the Lanzarote vlog as well. The flight was only three hours but when we landed and got to the hotel it was past seven in the evening and we took off at 1pm. 

On the coach transfer to Playa Blanca, the travel rep talked us through the sights of Lanzarote leading in to Playa Blanca. I did something I hardly ever do out of school - learnt something. Lanzarote is a volcanic island and has 101 volcanoes. Fortunately, only one volcano, called Timanfaya, is semi-active and volcanists test to see whether the volcano will erupt every ten minutes. On the coach trip, there were a few small villages scattered around a vast landscape of volcanic rubble from where the volcano erupted back in September 1730. There was also something very significant about the houses and buildings of Lanzarote. All the houses were whitewash and buildings cannot be more than four storeys high. I can't remember the name of the man who was to blame for this, all I know is that he was an artist and exhibitionist in Lanzarote and homeowners who do not have a whitewash house must have a very good explanation. As we arrived in Playa Blanca, it was a beautiful built up area with better infrastructure than the volcanic rubble we had just driven through. The benefits of package holidays was that we had to drop off people at their hotels so we got to see the other accommodation choices and feel relieved at the choice of our hotel. Most of the hotels seemed not that nice and didn't have much there but the hotel we stayed in was amazing.