Eddie Spaghetti and the Sauce

The last posting was soooooooooo long that I think only 2 or 3 of you actually made it to the end.

This one will be shorter – much shorter. Well, I say that now but you know me – busy fingers.

So if you haven’t read the Abracadabra story by now, consider yourself walking into the middle of this story.

After our whirlwind LA and LV trip to see my life long pal George P and magician Criss Angel, we returned to Copenhagen. Jens notices that I only had to work for 4 days and then I was scheduled to have off another 5 days. Jens thought I was working too hard in LA and LV and that I could use a break so he suggested we go to Gran Canaria for a week. “But I only have 5 days off” I reminded Jens. “Well just ask your boss for 3 more days off”, saying it as though it was as easy as pie - or danish as the case may be. In the past it was. But now we had new vacations procedures. All vacation requests are to be sent directly to the personnel office. After firing 2/thirds of our employee’s just before vacation time, the office posted a notice that no vacation requests will be accepted until the end of August. I made a plea and got only one day out of the 3 that I asked for. Jens was so upset about that, he called the personnel office and yelled at the guy for not letting me have 3 lousy days off. The law states that all employees are allowed to take up to 3 consecutive weeks during the summer months. In my 10 years of employment at SAS I have never taken more than a week and I think I have done that only twice. I save my vacation time for the cold winter months so that I can warm up in California and Gran Canaria.

I though that Jens calling the office and yelling at the guy was hysterical – but as it turns out I still got just the one day. In my office I was telling the guys about my situation and 2 workmates said that they would work the days for me. I couldn't believe it.

So we booked ourselves a last minute SAS stand-by employee discount flight. Can you believe we did that after all that hassle in the states ?!

I’ll spare you on the details because I know the last story was just too much for most of you.

I wont tell you about how we first had to fly north to Oslo to get south to Gran Canaria. And I wont tell you about how we had to fly Spanair coming home and stop in Madrid for a change of planes. I’m not even going to tell you much about Gran Canaria because I have written lots about it in the past and there is a ton of info on the web if you are really interested. For those of you who are new to my blog and have not heard the many stories of my Gran Canaria adventures – consider yourself lucky.

But if you must – you can click to the left of this story onto the little arrow that points to 2008 and then to the month of May and read a long Canarian story for more info.

For now…. I will let the pictures tell the story with short captions.

After flying one hour to Oslo, Norway and then 5 hours to Gran Canaria, we get our auto rental and try to figure out how to squeeze our cosmetic bags and hat boxes into the mini trunk.

Notice we are wearing the same "designer polyester" that we wore to Seattle, SF, LA, LV, EWR and NYC.......

In Playa del Ingles, we always stay in apartments or bungalows. We never stay in hotels. But of all the hotels in Playa del Ingles, this is the biggest and most expensive. We finally splurged and gave it a try. It's a great place but the draw back is that in reality it's a zenior zitizen zenter for za Germanz mit wery loud moozik zo de od peoplez khan hear zit.

It's the largest hotel in Play del Ingeles. It's the one with the 2 dark blue swimming pools. The 2 light blue swimming pools belong to 2 different hotels that are actually closer to the water. But still the hotel looks out to the dunes and has views to the water too.

This is the front of the hotel. The main entrance is through the big large square port. Through this port is a walk way that takes you to the beach and the dunes. It is actually open to the public and it's also the "river" way for flash floods. If you look at the pic. above you will see that the walk way / river way goes right through the grounds of the hotel. There is a bridge that goes from the one half of the pool/yard/garden to the other half of the pool/yard/garden.

We had a corner room which meant that we did not get a full view as some of the other rooms but what a view we had - WOW!

I've seen this place at least 20 times. Jens used to live here. But this was Andy's first time so it was fun to be his personal tour guide. And it was fun just to be there again and enjoy the beautiful views. Here we are at Porto de Mogan - a fisherman's village gone tourist with beautiful bougainvillea.

We take time out from the heat to have a coke and a squint.

Another waterway for flash floods. It's dolled up with foot bridges and palm trees.

Lots of tourist junk to buy in one of the squares.

On another day we take a island tour. Here are some of my favorite plants when they are in bloom. Well..... these are about to bloom with white flowers. After the flower dies out, then the entire plant will die out too causing a new and larger growth and the process will keep repeating.

One of the first villages we come to is Fataga. It's close to the center of the island. We always stop here for a stretch and a bite to eat. We usually eat across the street from the church but this time we found a new patio restaurant that looks out over one of the valleys.

I'm sitting at the table and in front of me is Jens at a fountain in the restaurant court yard and behind me is this view.

Most of the island is jagged volcanic rock. We stop somewhere in the middle of it all when we cross one of the high points that lets us look out over the ocean to see the next Canarian island called Tenerife which has an active volcano. We were there a few years ago and watched the smoke and steam spew out every few minutes - very exciting! Look closely and you can see the volcano on the next island.

Looking back the other way - away from the volcano is this tip of mountain rock called Roque Nublo.

From this one point our cameras were in constant point and click mode.

Further on up the road is this center island village called Cruz de Tejeda. Often you can see here the clouds from the north coast pour over the top of the mountain ridge; like foam spilling over the edge of a cup and then disappearing. It can be quite cold up here on a hot day down below. Here we take another relaxing sandwich break.

One of the many mountain villages.

One of my favorite tourist traps is this cactus garden / parrot park. Odd combination but the guy who started it was interested in birds and little by little built up this garden to show tourist all of the plants that grow on the island and added birds from around the world which in time turned out also to include a giant size aquarium, orchid house, butterfly house, alligator pit, monkey pit and now they are building a dolphin stage. This is amazing because all of it is high up in the mountains. There is a bird show that is out in an open arena and includes beautiful Macaws, Eagles and others in free flight. It's a learning show. The birds don't do stupid tricks. It's quite amazing.

Stupid trick - Andy stands on one leg along with the pink flamingos.

Andy too is a bird freak. He has an African parrot of his own - simular to the one hanging here at the bottom of his shirt.

Notice the bird nibbling at Jens's ear.

"I wanted to make the pictures on this blog - this big"

"But some of them turned out to be - this big"

Andy spots a butterfly.

This Cockatoo actually ripped the cap of my water bottle off.

It was so hot he just had to have a drink of water.

Fruit Loops

Little Jens - Big Andy

Andy takes a break under a huge Jacaranda tree.

The beach is just beyond the hotel but the pool is so inviting we just had to try it out the pool side service.

The cool temps bring out the adolescents in Jens and Andy. Later on Jens comes to realize that Andy standing and jumping off of Jens's shoulders was maybe not the smartest idea for a man who has an electric wire from brain to chest via the shoulder.