Celestial Canary Island cruise - Day 9 - La Palma

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Day 9 - La Palma



Have not visited this island before, one of the youngest Canary Islands.



Our tour today took us from the one side of the island to the other passing through mountain roads, & banana plantations.



We arrived at a pretty town, El Paso, where we visited a unique silk museum. La Palma has produced silk since the 16th century. We saw a demonstration showing all 14 silk production stages. Very interesting to silk being weaved by hand following the traditional methods. This is the only place in Europe where this method is still used.



We stopped at Parque Antonio Gomez Felipe - a pretty park in the middle of Los Llanos de Aridane town. Beautiful metal work on gates, stairs and fences. Mosaic flooring as well as the entry guarding lizards, a little reminiscent of Gaudi’s garden in Barcelona on a much smaller scale.

A fantasy garden with little pathways winding around and over lava rocks and pools.



Our next stop was to visit a beautiful restored 17th century sugar estate, now a small luxurious Hotel Hacienda de Abajo. This hotel has been in the same family for 800 years and has a wonderful collection of sculptures, paintings, porcelain, furniture & tapestries.



We were shown into one of the guests suites also a standard room. Wow, this would definitely be like staying in a museum, I can see why it is an adult only hotel, mind you there were a few doddery people in our group but thankfully nothing was knocked over !!



I loved the decorative plaques outside each room and it must be a delight to stay in such an interesting hotel surrounded by lush vegetation.



We enjoyed refreshments in a small courtyard served in lovely porcelain cups/saucers and plates. The banana straight from the plantation was quite delicious too.



On our way back to the ship the driver stopped at a view point so we could see the crater of the volcano that erupted in 2021.

Since erupting on 19 September, the Cumbre Vieja volcano destroyed more than 3,000 properties as well as churches, schools and swathes of banana plantations.

More than 7,000 people were forced to leave their homes as the lava closed in. For three months, lava poured out of the volcanic ridge, and flowed to the sea, however, the eruption did not cause tsunamis to spread across the Atlantic Ocean, as some experts had predicted.

It must have been a devastating time for all those affected & still are.



Another formal evening on board tonight.

Tomorrow we will be at our last port of call Funchal Madeira.

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