Day 16 Thursday Las Palmas

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Today we decided to splash out on the bus once again and take a trip to the other end of the island to see the capital Las Palmas. Home apparently to 1 million souls!

The bus service on the island is quite good. The buses themselves are quite comfortable and more like coaches than the buses we are used to at home, but whilst they are clean, comfortable and plentiful, they aren’t particularly cheap, it costing us 11.80 Euros each for the return journey.

The journey itself was not particularly inspiring, it was quite quick, only taking 45 minutes but the rows and rows of concrete hotels around Playa del Ingles just gave way to very grey and tatty looking poly plastic tunnels stretching for miles and sheltering the crops which in turn gave way to huge industrial estates and wind farms closer to the capital and whilst we were hoping to see some picturesque villages that we may want to visit.

There is another big controversy on the island at the moment about a huge new prison that is being built between Las Palmas and Playa del Ingles. Its stretches over a very wide area and is one of the first things tourist will see when leaving the airport. Not only that but as local residents have said they are worried about day release prisoners who leave for the day and don’t return at night which apparently happens quite often being right next to the largest tourist complex on the island. Whilst it has to go somewhere and is bringing employment into the area it is possibly another example of politicians not thinking.

Once we reached Las Palmas, things did not particularly improve. We decided to leave the older part of the city with the Cathedral till our return to the station and head uptown following a walk described in our guidebook and this was possibly a mistake since whilst we did come across a few nice streets and some nice sights overall we were particularly underwhelmed by our trip and in comparison with other cities we have visited such as Funchal in Madeira, Las Palmas pretty much came to live up to our expectations from the rest of the island.

Looking later at the photos I had taken Las Palmas actually looks quite pretty in places and there were some nice parts like the parks and down by the sea front, but overall there was just something missing and our overall impression was of a grey and dull inner city, somewhere that did not inspire us and somewhere we would not wish to return to in a hurry.

The few highlights of the day were the very sumptuous looking and apparently 6 star Santa Catalina Hotel and surrounding park. Seeing a group of cockerels in Santa Catalina park, El Muel shopping centre, El Corte Ingles and even and M&S for my Mum.

Unfortunately by the time we retraced our steps to the bus station 8 hours after we set off we were both feeling a bit foot sore, weary, hot and tired and so we never did make it to the Cathedral and the older part of the city but from what we did see we didn’t feel as if we were missing a great deal.

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