so tenerife. it's hard to complain about a tropical island surrounded by brilliant blue seas. but i'll try, at least a bit.

the thing about tenerife is that it's basically england, transported to somewhere sunny and warm. it's all hotels and pubs full of english people. fish and chips is on every menu and every store carries all the english papers. it's hard to find a bit of spain. actually, as a disclaimer, that's really only true of playa de las americas, los cristianos, and costa adeje, the 3-now-joined-into-1 resorts on the southwest coast. and even there, i did have a couple of spanish things. one: hake, basque style (i guess that's not so much spanish as basque, but close enough), and two: la mumba, a drink made with brandy and chocolate milk (mmmmmmm, yummmmmmmmmmm).

it's not really my kind of vacation. i like to have some native culture on my vacations. i find it fun and adventurous if i land somewhere and have to find a hotel, make my way around in a place that doesn't necessarily cater to tourists, and make a guess on the menu because i can't read any of the item descriptions. that is decidedly not what you get at playa de las americas. most people, maybe all people, come on a package holiday that includes airfare, hotel, and often half board (breakfast and dinner eaten in the hotel restaurant).

our days mostly followed the same pattern: breakfast at the hotel, followed by a walk along the beach promenade and shops with at least one stop for a drink (stopped for an hour), and to look at the british tabloid newspapers for news (though "news" did not, incredibly, include an account of the massive blackout from NYC to toronto. we had to find out about that when we saw it on the news back in england. no, news in tenerife consisted entirely of last-minute footballer swaps and posh spice's new madrid wardrobe ("get her dresses! her bags! her shoes!")), then the afternoon spent at the hotel pool, reading and sleeping and dipping in the pool when the sun got too hot. we'd leave the pool at 7pm, when the heat finally went out of the sun, shower, and have dinner at the hotel (we ate out three nights), then head to a bar (either the brewer's droop or the moonlight, usually) to see a cabaret act.* at 1 or 2 am, we'd head home and call it a night.

*what they call cabaret in tenerife is 1-3 guys singing what is basically glorified karaoke. they sing other people's songs (mustang sally being a oft-repeated choice) with pre-recorded back-up music. some sing a mix of songs, others specialize. especially popular are elvis, tina turner, and queen impersonators, though we also spotted ads for cher, meatloaf, and rod stewart. after seeing one really bad elvis act followed by an even worse queen act, we sought out better fare. thus we ended up 2 nights each at the brewer's droop and the moonlight where we saw the looney tunes (a music and comedy act, as the name suggests) and the lizard kings (by far, the best act we saw (or heard, as we walked down the street) respectively. the lizard kings were a really excellent cover band, which is several giant steps up from the queen (really, freddy mercury, since it was just the one guy) impersonator we saw the first night.

one of the famous things to do in las americas is to go dancing in veronicas, a little neighborhood of clubs, the center of which is bobby's and busby's, two clubs that share a building. karl and i went one night, but only stayed til 3 (usually, apparently, you dance til dawn, with a break for food about 3) because (a) the clubs were disappointingly empty (there was, get this, ROOM TO DANCE. unacceptable), and (b) we felt really really old, being about double the age of most of the revelers. see, veronicas is were the 15 year olds go to see and be seen, and more importantly, to drink.

two days, we got out of las americas. the first day, we rented a vw cabrio (my first time in a convertible!) and drove up to el teide (this guy's pictures of it are so way better than the ones i took). it's crazy up there. teide is a volcano, 12,198 ft. high, that rises from the center of a ring of mountains that were themselves an older crater. most of the landscape is covered with lava fields, which are nuts. they are sharp jagged like you've never seen. there is a cable car up to the top, but the line was at least 3 hours long, and hey, i don't wanna be doing that. you can walk to the top, and if i'd been there with, say, ingrid, we would totally have planned a dawn trip walking up teide. but alas, i was not with ingrid.

after teide, we drove down the north side of the island, toward puerto de la cruz, which is the city you can see on that picture of tenerife from space that is on the website i linked to above. the north side of the island is green and lush. the south side is arid dry desert. which, i suppose, makes it just about the perfect place to put a beach resort. anyhow, puerto de la cruz is a spanish town (it was nice to get to see one) with a main attaction of a HUGE ASS swimming pool built out over the ocean. it's beautiful, with big rocks as the edges, and a natural lagoon shape. there are fountains and grottos, and it's huge. i tried to find a picture, but there just aren't any that do it justice. it is lined, as are all pools in tenerife, with brown beautiful women in thong bikinis and no tops. straight men, you would love it. also in puerto de la cruz, we ate ice cream, and i bought a satchel-style hand bag and got chastised by karl for not haggling.

leaving puerto de la cruz, we drove west, headed for los gigantes. los gigantes is a town at the base of "the second highest cliffs in europe," for which it is named. we got there just as it was getting dark, so we snapped some photos and headed back to the hotel.

the other non-resort thing we did was take a boat trip. we went out to see to see pilot whales (which look like stubby dolphins, really), dolphins, and los gigantes. coming up to the cliffs of los gigantes (the second highest cliffs in europe, said our guide, failing entirely to tell us what the tallest cliffs in europe are) from the sea was amazing. there seems to be a permanent (though i think it must be seasonal, because i've seen clear photos) haze around the island, so that you can't see very far at all. so as we approached the cliffs, they loomed at us out of the haze. they were huge above us, rising straight out of the water. there were vertical veins running through them that our guide said were from lava running down them. lava, running the hundred or so miles from teide over the island, still hot enough to pour over the edge of these cliffs and into the ocean. as it hit the ocean, i'm sure the water boiled, and steam rose up, partially obscuring the fire-red cliff walls. it probably looked like hell.*

*metaphorically speaking, of course, since i don't believe in hell.

all in all, a nice vacation, considering that it really wasn't what i would've chosen. but after a week, i was ready to go. the first time that's ever happened, i think. wanting a vacation to be over.

we got back to england and started our buffer vacation, which is a great idea, i've decided. at the end of a really great vacation, give yourself a few days in a less fabulous place, but still not at home where work and dishes and laundry are, to readjust. we had originally intended to attend V, the virgin music festival, but tickets were sold out. then, we wanted to get everton at arsenal tickets, but they weren't available to the non-season ticket holders we are. so we went for plan c, which was to drive to shef, where karl's from, to see his brother mike and his new baby, isabel (shhhh, don't tell mike that he was 3rd down on the list). mike is 31, and last year shocked the family by announcing that he and his then-17-year-old girlfriend were having a baby. this made the family nervous, given mike's track record of short-lasting relationships and jobs, and chronic lack of money. but the baby seems to have straightened him out. he's got a steady job, is still with becky, and has bought a house that the 3 of them live in.

isabel, of course, is adorable. she's a petite blonde with big blue eyes and alabaster skin. she enjoys plastic rings, mango juice, and any toy she can put in her mouth. in a man, she's looking for someone to hold her tight and sit her up when she topples over. mike and becky are gaga over her. actually, in becky's case, i worry a bit. she's not working, she's only 18, and i suspect she's isolated from her friends because she's got a baby. her whole life is isabel. when isabel grows up, i think becky's going to be surprised to find herself in her mid-thirties with no life of her own. i hope she can cope.

on the way to the airport yesterday morning, we had real luck. we were attempting to drive the M25 (the ring road around london) from e.i.r.u.n's house (at about 1 o'clock on the ring road) to gatwick (at 6 o'clock). about 50 miles. we had to be at the airport about 10 am, to return the rental car and check in. this puts us in rush hour hell. but no problem. the gods were smiling. we zoomed around with no traffic. and here's the thing. here's the thing about england. there we are, on the ring road of london, one of the world's busiest cities, and there's cows. COWS. can you imagine, those of you who live in the washington dc area, cows? inside the beltway? no, i didn't think so. but in london, there are cows. this is one of the things i love about england.* that suburban sprawl hasn't really happened. they go nicely from city to rural countryside in the blink of an eye.

*another is roundabouts. i'm just saying. oh, and the wacky flavors of potato chips (aka crisps) they've got. for example, along with such mundane flavors as salt and vinager, cheese and chives, and tomato ketchup (which i've actually seen a couple times over here), there's bacon, prawn cocktail, roast beef and mustard, worchester sauce, pickled onion, beef and onion, roast chicken, and lamb and mint. it's like those gumballs at willy wonka's chocolate factory that tasted like a full dinner, one course at a time.

al gore makes me swoon

19 August 2003 - 2:21 pm

to me, george w. represents everything that i hate about america. he is destroying our environment, ruining our economy, sacrificing the lower classes in favor of the wealthy oil barons, and succeeding in making the rest of the world hate us. i hope his election to the presidency will go down in history as the scandal that it was. i don't know if the country can take 4 more years of him. please, please, let's throw him out. if only al gore had been as eloquent in 2000 as he was at nyu recently. if only.

fresh from the can, SPAM! i'll slice it if you fry it up.

19 August 2003 - 2:07 pm

i'm back in the office today, after 10 days off in tenerife and england (more later). first task, of course, is to clean out my inbox. i had 511 new messages. 275 of those were automatically deleted by my spam filter. most of those 275 were from diaryland, you know the ones, ***SPAM*** give her more pleasure axhugy wkci339id dkj.

right. so i had to go through the remaining 236 by hand. 167 of those were spam, giving me a grand total of ...

442 spams!

that's 86% of my new messages. totally out of control. you know those government figures that say that something like 40% of all email received is spam? they should check my inbox.