A Week in Lanzarote - Part Two

After a mixed start to our week in Lanzarote, we were determined to just relax and enjoy the rest of our stay, so on Wednesday afternoon, we headed out in our rental car, to visit some other parts of the island.

First stop was the Museum of Cesar Manrique just north of the island's capital in Arrecife. Senor Manrique was a very famous local born artist who built an amazing house into the lava rocks in the north of the island. It is a beautiful house.  Seeing some of his works and finding out about his life and his struggles to protect the island from overdevelopment by tourism was interesting. 

Here are a few photos from our visit:

We then drove a little further and stopped off in the pretty and very friendly town of Teguise, in the centre of the island. Whilst OH sat in a small bar, LB and I explored a couple of local tourist shops and bought a few bits of local hand made jewellery. There were lots of items made from gemstones and the black lava from the island's volcanoes, and it was some the latter that I bought.

We then joined OH at the bar for some sangria and tapas and had a lovely relaxing evening, before returning to the villa.

On Thursday, I started the day in the usual way that I started each day on this holiday, sitting by the pool for few hours, whilst OH went for a ride around the island. I finished my book and enjoyed getting a good dose of vitamin D. The locksmith came in the morning and completed the repairs to the lock on the gate, so it was good to get that resolved. 

Later in the afternoon, we headed out again, to a beach a bit further down the coast this time and spent some time on the beach getting sand in every possible orifice, as it was very windy. It was nice to sit on the beach though. I almost can't remember the last time I did that.

After an hour or so, we retired to a bar on the beach front for a beer, before heading home and picking up some rotisserie chicken on the way for supper.

Friday, was our last full day on Lanzarote, so in the early afternoon, we headed out to do a bit more exploring of the island. On this occasion, we headed to the north of the island, which was stunningly beautiful. We also stopped of at a cactus garden created by Cesar Manrique, which was also beautiful, with many hundreds of different species of cacti. Here's a few pictures of the garden:

Later, we stopped off in the beautiful town of Haria for drinks, before driving south and through the National Park of the Volcanoes, whose landscape was stunning, being made up almost solely of volcanoes and lava, which was spewed out in the 18th century over a period of 6 years of continuous eruptions.

We finished our day out at a restaurant for supper on the way back, to celebrate our last night in Lanzarote. We were ready to go home. We'd had a lovely time, but we always look forward to seeing our dog again. We miss her when we're away, she's part of the family.

On Saturday, we were probably the palest family on the plane. We never tan very deeply in just a week and hardly look like we've seen any sun during our stay, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I tend to be the one of us that spends the most time sitting in the sun, but I try not to overdo it and always wear plenty of high factor sun screen these days. The flight back was delayed unfortunately, so we were late getting home and picking up our dog, but it was so lovely to see her again and she was very happy to see us too.

We had a lovely week and there's still lots of things that we didn't get around to doing, should we ever visit the island again. We all came home feeling very relaxed, having had a much needed break.