Christmas in the sun - December 2005
Playa Blanca, Lanzarote, Canary Islands

The view from our balcony, the sea's over there at the top left.

  Winter holidays in our household are usually spent in Scotland, dog sitting whilst the Spartan Press crowd go somewhere hot and sunny for their annual holiday. Karen decided she wanted to be warm for 2006 and Dave wasn't arguing so we booked a late break through the Portland Direct website. We flew from Leeds-Bradford airport, a 2 minute bus trip from Sentinel Car Parks, an hours drive from home. We flew in the early afternoon, arriving on time late in the afternoon, just in time to go out for a meal and a couple of beers, 2°C to more than 20°C in less than 5 hours, brilliant. It had the added advantage that we wouldn't be in the UK for the Christmas, a real bonus in our minds, Christmas is just excessive in the UK these days.

  As usual, we checked the resort and the apartments on the Holidays Uncovered website. Playa Blanca sounded perfect for us, not to lively but with plenty of places to eat, drink, walk and shop, what more could we want for a relaxing winter break. We stayed at the Sun Royal Apartments, which also received good reviews and lived up to our expectations by being clean, tidy and friendly. We didn't use the on-site bar, restaurant or Internet facilities but the basic supermarket was very useful for beer, water and food for snacks and breakfasts. There are a couple of pools and plenty of sun beds, all in all a good place to stay, we'd happily go back. It's a bit of a walk to the main sea front bars and restaurants but only a couple of Euros by taxi if you want to avoid the exercise.

  Playa Dorada beach was good and it was also popular most days, especially being one of the beaches which had survived the November storms relatively unscathed and still having sand on it instead of lots of rocks. We didn't spend much time on the beach, although we spent lots of time walking along the sea front prom alongside it. Can't be doing with all that sand between the toes, something to do with 'grumpy old man' syndrome probably.

  The Rubicon Marina is a few minutes stroll along the sea front heading East. The marina is pretty smart, lots of very expensive yatchs and cruisers, and some interesting older boats as well. There's quite a bit of development going on with new shops, bars and restaurants being opened, some of them very posh. There's even that essential for any English tourist, a public toilet, although the gents was locked so be prepared to use the women's side, if you can brave the funny looks you get from the German tourists.

  We'd read a couple of reports which said that Lani's restaurant wasn't a great place to eat but it was situated so perfectly, alongside the marina in the sunshine, it just looked a tempting place to stop. A beer, burger and chips did the job and very nice it was too. Sitting alongside the railings on a balcony jutting out over the marina was a great place to watch the hundreds of fish swimming around the clear waters of the harbour.

  The sea front at Playa Blanca is great for strolling along in the sunshine, and plenty of places to stop for a rest if you want one,especially if you like bars and restaurants as much as we do. The prom looks tidy and it's an easy walk, very pleasant on a warm December day, and hardly a sign of Christmas decorations anywhere.

  The harbour at Playa Blanca is home to a couple of Ferries which regularly make the crossing to Corallejo on the North side of Fuertaventura. This one is the Catamaran, the other is a more conventional ship but they both take what looked like a huge amount of vehicles, I suppose they're just a regular part of the transport network to the locals. The harbour still houses fishing boats, we didn't see much activity although most of the restaurants where selling fresh caught local fish so someone must have been catching something. Unless they'd been up to Lani's at the marina and just dropped a net into the water whilst having a beer or two...

  The sea front is mostly bars and restaurants, with a few souvenir or beach ware shops. There are a couple of electrical goods and perfume shops here, most of them are in the main shopping area set back 50 meters or so from the sea front. If you tire of sitting watching the sea whilst eating, there are plenty more bars and restaurants along the main street. The beach along the sea front seemed to have taken a bit of a battering from the storms a month or so earlier and was still waiting to be turned back into sand.

  Many of the hotels and apartments made the usual effort to develop gardens and borders, there were loads of 'Bird of Paradise' flowers in some of them, some even had grass although I'm not sure how they managed to get enough water to keep it green. In contrast, there were huge areas of open ground around the outside of Playa Blanca, some of it being developed. The Sun Royal Apartments are situated on the edge of the town, for the moment, so the view out of the front door was a bit barren, although the hills are pretty in the sunlight.

There are loads of restaurants in Playa Blanca, not so many bars and there's none of the over the top excesses of some of the busier resorts in the Canaries. We spent most evenings having a couple of beers in The Kings Head which is rather less English than it's name suggests, more typical resort Spanish. In common with other bars, they often had live music, it's pretty relaxing to sit outside a bar on a warm evening and listen to a band whilst having a couple of beers. The picture is a band called Boulevard playing at Mollies Irish Bar, the best of 3 sessions we saw them do over the holiday.

  Christmas Eve was spent walking all the way along the sea front, heading west to the lighthouse on the headland of Punta Pechiguera, about 3 1/2 miles. It was a beautiful hot day with clear blue skies, just what we wanted from a Christmas holiday. There's loads of hotels and a few restaurants along the walk in the first mile or two, after that it gets a bit more barren and typical of Canarian scenery.

The sea front looking West	Looking back to Playa Blanca	Faro de Pechiguera

  After a rest out on the headland, we walked back and stopped at 'El Argentino' cafe bar for some lunch. It was great, hot and sunny, cold beer, good sandwiches, a nutty barman in a 'Father Christmas' hat and Bing Crosby singing 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas' on the CD player. The rest of the customers thought we were a bit strange when we burst out laughing, maybe it's because they were German.

  We'd promised our friends we would be spending Christmas Day on the beach. We didn't, but we did go on to Playa Dorada beach long enough to take a couple of pictures. Plenty of other people seemed to be getting away from the festivities as well, the beach was pretty crowded.

  Christmas lunch was spent at Lani's again where we had pizza instead of the more traditional (in the UK) turkey, looking out at the Rubicon Marina after we'd finished browsing the closed shops. Even Canarian holiday resorts shut down a bit over the Christmas holidays. We got loads of sparrows landing, obviously used to people feeding them as they were happy to come right up to the table on some occasions.

  The beaches to the East of Playa Blanca are in much better condition and don't seem to have suffered too badly from the storms. We walked out towards El Papagayo on the one day of the week when we had some showers, stopped for a rest on the beach at Playa de las Colorades and then headed back again. It's about 6 miles round trip, probably another 3 miles to go all the way out to El Papagayo and back but we didn't fancy it in the damp weather, so we went to Lani's and had a beer instead.

  On our last day, we strolled down to the sea front for lunch and then back to the Sun Royal to wait for the transfer coach. Driving back to the airport, we could sea a storm coming from the North West across the mountains, it was pouring with rain by the time we got to the airport. The flight was delayed by the storm and then by a technical problem. The pilot told it was cold and a bit snowy back home, we were still surprised to land to snow, ice and temperatures of -4°C. Even that didn't prepare us for the shock of seeing our garden under 4 inches of snow the next day. Now, where's the booking form, we need another holiday...

  Our recommended places to eat and drink, there's a sort of sea front theme here, we like to watch the sea whilst we're eating.

Restaurant Cervantes, on the main road into town
Jumbo's Chinese Restaurant, on the sea front
Lani's Restaurant, Rubicon Marina
Brisa Marine Terrace Restaurant, on the sea front
El Argentino, a mile or so out towards the lighthouse
El Varadero, on the sea front
Rincon, on the sea front again
La Vaca Tijuana (or The Stone Grill as people seem to know it), sea front again

Kings Head, live music and friendly service, on the sea front
Mollies Irish Bar, live music and friendly, they do food as well, near sea front
The Old Mill Irish Bar, Live music, get to it from the main road or the sea front

And a great ice cream stall on the corner of the amusement arcade next to the Kings Head, we ate a lot of ice cream during the week.

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	Playa Blanca 2007

Pictures and text are copyright © Dave & Karen Petty- All Rights Reserved, please don't copy anything without our permission. Thanks, D & K.