Best Week Ever! Tenerife, Day 1

Since we weren't able to take a trip as soon as Pete came home from his residency, we decided to wait and go on a BIG trip.  And we decided to take this trip with friends, and NO kids. 

That combination was awesome.

We went with our friends Jody and Jared Dean.  This is a couple in our ward who we have grown to love over the past three years, and they have 5 kids of their own.  They got to Germany the same summer that we did.  Jared is an orthodontist and planning to leave the army this summer.  I serve in the YW presidency with Jody, and along with this trip, we went to Belgium together, and we are also going to Scotland together next month.  This is one couple I really don't want to say good-bye to.

We decided to go to Tenerife, one of the five islands in the Canary Islands.  It is considered part of Spain, but is actually closer to the African coast.  Either way, the temperatures were warm. We flew in Saturday and left the following Saturday.  

We didn't get to our apartment till about 5:00 pm, so we just unpacked and headed out to find dinner and a supermercado (grocery store).

Day One:

Our apartment is among these residences, on the second floor.

And this is what we saw from the balcony:

Inside our two bedroom apartment: 

The guys spent a good amount of time laughing at youtube videos.

We decided to find the church on the island (honestly, we were surprised there was one) so we got up early and got ready.  Jody made us some mean eggs for breakfast.

We found the church.  It was a small branch, and of course, all in Spanish.  Pete understood all of it, Jared understood most of it, I caught on pretty well ( I understand Spanish so much better than German) and Jody was mostly lost.  Oh well.  We went.

This is the building the branch meets in.  It is two levels, with the chapel and a few classrooms on top, and more classrooms on the bottom level.

This is the road the church is on.  So pretty.

We went downstairs to find the restroom, and found ourselves looking at the baptismal font.  

After church, we headed to a local market that is only open on Sundays.  We walked around and bought a few things like sandals and dresses.  Jody and I also had our hair done, fully expecting to take it out the next day.  To our surprise, we kept the braids in all week, and it actually kept the rest of our hair out of our faces during all the wind.  It was great.

I thought this would give me a headache.  Thankfully it didn't.  

Pretty cool, huh?  The ladies that did this to our hair were from Senegal.

This was the final result.  

This was my favorite sign of the week.  We saw it multiple times.

Do you think they just push the wheelchairs out to the water and leave them?

Then we just walked along the coast in awe of this amazing place we were visiting.

For dinner we went to a tapas bar (not a topless bar) and sampled lots of items.  

This one made us laugh.

This was yummy....

... this was not.

We saw quite a few sand sculptures, and to take pictures we had to drop a few coins in the sand.  Totally worth it.

Ahhh... sun and sand.

Seriously, I don't know.