Casey's Semester Abroad in Europe: Spring Break in the Canary Islands!

View from our balcony

Even though this entire semester has seemed like a vacation, I had an official week off of school for spring break. Where do you travel for a week with a group of 25+ friends when you've already been to such amazing places? Well, we thought the Canary Islands would be that perfect location. The Canary Islands are a group of islands that are Spanish territory off the coast of Africa that are occupied by English, Scottish and Irish people. Its quite a mouthful to describe and that's pretty much how I feel about my entire week there.

We flew into Tenerife Island on Friday night, exactly 24 hours after our arrival to Spain. Everyone thought we were crazy for already leaving Spain especially during Easter weekend which is the best time to be in Sevilla, Spain. (In Seville they have a huge celebration week for Easter). When we arrived to the island at 12am we were seeing young people roam the streets and starting to go out. We were way too tired from all of our traveling to hit the clubs our first night so we opted to just hang out and unwind. For the first night not all of us had our rooms yet so we doubled up in a room with friends. The next morning we got to check into our room (Me, Emily, Victoria and Sharron). We initially got a room with a view facing the street and not the pool, which all of our other friends had. Since Sharron speaks fluent Spanish we had her go down to the reception and ask to switch rooms with one that had a pool view instead. To our surprise they had another 4 person room on the top floor. When we went to scope out our new room we were blown away. We hands-down had the best view of the entire hotel!

With the 80 degree sun shining through our hotel window, we weren't hesitant at all to hit the beach on our first morning. The first beach we went to wasn't quite what we expected. There was no sand, it was more like dirt and the water wasn't swimmable with all the rocks. It was definitely a beach where all the local surfers went to. None of us complained about it but all were doing so in our head.

Our days became pretty repetitive once we found a better beach with soft sand and swimmable waters. Wake up around 11, grab an english breakfast (the only breakfast they offered on the island, which consisted of over-easy eggs, toast, sausage, and beans) head out to the beach til about 5pm, grab a snack (and a 1euro beer) go to the hotel pool til 7pm, go to dinner around 8:30pm then head out to the clubs around 12pm. We didn't mind this routine at all. We tried to plan other things to do such as going to the top of the volcano on the island and going on a catamaran but it was way too windy to do either on the days we planned.

The food on the island wasn't too bad...besides the breakfast. They had a lot of options as far as restaurants. We went to a steakhouse, Italian place, Comfort Food kind of place and Irish place. They kind of have it all. The prices on the island weren't that bad surprisingly. It was all about competition honestly. Every restaurant had a promoter outside trying to bring you in. Same for the clubs. Every night we went out there were club promoters trying to lure us in. They all sold the same deal so we quickly learned to ignore them.

Overall all 30 of the St John's students who went to the Canary Islands had a fabulous trip. We pretty much had the same feeling about leaving the island. Relaxing on the beach was perfect as well as getting back my golden tan. As much fun as we did have, the island got dirtier and dirtier day by day. Tenerife was definitely the perfect place for a college spring break but I would not recommend it to an older couple or for a family vacation. I must say the security guards at our hotel were very pleased to see us checkout just as we were pleased to leave them. We were all excited to head back to Spain and explore our last country of residence.