First blog of the year.

What shall I write about? Expectation.

We had two weeks in Tenerife in December. We did have great expectations for it. We have been there every year for the last ten years, so we know the Island quite well. We normally stay in the Los Americas, but had not been able to "get in" there, and we opted to stay in Golf del Sur.

We are in a Time Share Company, our experience of it has been good, over the ten years we have had good value for our Points/money.

This year was different, the first time we stayed, (a few years ago) we were given a huge appartment overlooking the sea, there had been brilliant Caberets on every night. This time, we were given a smaller appartment (we had asked for sea view in a quiet area). The appartment was looking tired and need of refurbishment, and on the 6th floor - we did almost have sole use of a lift. We could see the sea if we looked to the left of the balcony, if we looked to the right, there was another accomodation block, with a blue painted fire escape type staircase, if we hung over the balcony, we were right over the Entertainment lounges. It did not turn out to be a problem, because we found out at the Welcome Meeting that there were no Entertainments (we were told it was Contractual Problems).

As we went for an exploratory walk towards San Blas, it became apparent that the building sites had been "mothballed", Bars and restaurents were closed or closing. When we talked to people, they told us people were leaving the Island in droves, but not to return to the U.K., they were going to Cyprus and Malta looking for sun levels.

We thought it was perhaps due to this area, but on going to Los Americas and walking to Fanabe, the signs of down turn were evident here too. The scratch card and time share touts were there in force and over zealous.

The weather was unseasonally chill, normally we had seen temperature of 20 - 25, this year it was 17 -19 degrees, all the locals were saying they felt cold and putting jumpers and shoes on, our response was, we had left England in snow and ice.

We did not feel our holiday was working it's magic. Normally we eat out one day and self cater the next day. Our Euros did not go very far at all. I do try and buy Spanish equivilants to keep costs down.

Coming home, due to adverse wind conditions flying into Leeds/Bradford, we had a "non-standard" landing. It was very turblant, the plane was buffetted by 50 m.p.h., winds, the plane was required to turn off it's engines as soon as it got down, a tug pulled it to an area that was considered safe for us to disembark. Coming down the steps, you had to hang on to the handrail with two hands, once we got down, we blew across to the tarmac to the waiting buses, everyone was very quiet going through Passport Control.

Did we have two high expectations of our holiday, or were we just unfortunate being overtaken by poor weather and by world events?

You usually joke on returning home "we need a holiday to get over our holiday". We feel we may never go away again.

My husband developed flu two days after coming home, I got Bronchitis.