Tenerife, a terrific beach vacation!

One week at the beach with my family was just what the doctor ordered. We were able to use my parents timeshare and we purchased discount plane tickets to go to the Canary Islands for our 1st European beach vacation. Most of our vacations have been like nice fieldtrips, visiting museums and sites and days filled with activities. Also, the weather on most of our European vacations has been cold and rainy even in the spring, so it was time to find hot, sunny weather and lay around and do nothing except spend time with each other. So we headed south...

Tenerife is the largest of the 7 Canary Islands of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean off of the coast of Africa. The temperature is ideal year round with the highs reaching the mid 90's and low's in the mid 70's. The island itself is a full of contrast in the landscape. From the peaks of Mt. Tiede, a volcano located on the island to the desert like areas with cacti and of course the beautiful beaches. Strangely, the north part of the island was much cooler and overcast we needed jackets when we got off of the plane. But the southern part of Tenerife was beautiful and sunny everyday of our vacation. We stayed at the Hollywood Mirage Resort in Los Cristianos in South Tenerife.

The resort catered heavily toward British tourists, so English was spoken everywhere and it had everything you could think of from sports activities to childrens clubs to entertainment and bbq's. Many of these activities were free and the resort restaurants were very reasonable priced, making this actually one of our most afforable vacations. And we had a lot of fun too! We spent lazy days at the beach and the resort pool. We also visited a fantastic waterpark and took a 3 hour sailing cruise to see pilot whales. In the evenings we had family game nights and watched movies. We even participated in the resorts X- factor talent show one night! There were about 11 people in all and guess which 3 Gray family members were selected to perform? Well, I put together a video of our vacation and of course the performances. We had a very relaxing and restful time on our perfect beach vacation!