I have been to the Canary Islands before (a long time ago) and had forgotten how beautiful the weather is there in the springtime. In April, whilst the UK was having another cold and wet spell, we were wandering around in T shirts and shorts and lying on a beach in Maspalomas with a gentle breeze blowing over us. Maspalomas is a lovely place to stay – less commercialised than Puerto Rico and Las Palmas. It has the most incredible sand dunes that make you feel like you are in the Sahara desert (but watch out for the very hot sands – I climbed one of the dunes to take some pictures and coming down I almost burnt my feet badly!). Our hotel wasn’t the greatest(Vista Oasis – see a separate review) and we would have liked to have been nearer the centre but it wasn’t a huge problem. The rise of all-inclusive hotels seems to have killed off some of the little bistro typre places and the ones that were still open never seemed very full. (We found a nice little place, near the beach, called “Cactus” where the owner was so pleased we had chosen his restaurant he gave us a free bottle of wine on each visit!) There are some lovely luxury hotels on the seafront where we treated ourselves to the odd cocktail at their poolside bars. There is also a great open air cinema in the town where we went to watch a film, sitting under the stars, on a comfortable sofa with a waitress serving us drinks! Other than enjoying the beautiful weather we also booked a round island tour which was very informative and took us to some very different towns and the obligatory Aloe Vera farm! We also went on a boat trip from Puerto Rico and saw dolphins and whales which was amazing. It was a fabulous 2 hours! We stayed in Puerto Rico for the rest of the day and it is very commercialised with thousands of hotels but it has a nice little beach, near the marina, where the water was easier to swim in as it was not as rough as at Maspalomas. One slightly overcast day we took the local bus into Las Palmas (There is a great bus service throughout the island) The Old Town was nice but the rest of Las Palmas was a bit disappointing with high rise buildings and busy roads. Overall, Gran Canaria is a great place to visit to get some early (or late) sun. The Island isn’t exactly pretty but it is craggy and rugged with lots of places to visit. We only visited a few places but saw enough to fall in love with it.
