I usually have a week-long trip in November and the Canary Islands are warm all year round. Upon seeing cheap tickets, without thinking too much, I got flights to Gran Canaria and back from Tenerife for €42 both ways. I have already been to the other two big Canary Islands: Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.

I didn’t spend much time on Gran Canaria, just 2 days and then I had a flight to Tenerife, where I had 6 days.

Las Palmas

Las Palmas is the biggest city and capital of the Canary Islands. The city has an “old” part of the town, which is colourful.

Hill

Old town streets

Status and palm trees

Blue corner

Yellow corner

Red corner

Spanish cities are bold: they use bright contrasting colors and everything blends together nicely.

Red cycling path

Purple hydrant

Palm trees

Traffic light

The city centre is new and boring. The buildings have simple shapes, which make the city feel geometric.

Cube

Cube + circles

Cylindric like corn

Dragging a window on Windows XP

My favourite is this thin house. It’s the finest specimen in my thin houses collection.

Slice

It is common to see whole buildings covered in a green mesh. My guess is that it’s to protect the streets from falling parts of the building, although they look solid.

Mysterious green mesh

This hypermarket has an open configuration with no doors. Very convenient and cool. I would imagine it encourages people to enter.

Hypermarket

Maspalomas

Maspalomas is a resort town in the south of Gran Canaria. I would describe the town itself as a big plastic village, like most resort towns.

However, the city borders with sand dunes.

It’s a big area and if you walk long enough, you will find a nice beach. Time to swim in the ocean.

Beach

Lighthouse peeking

The only building in Maspalomas that I want to show is this lighthouse.

Lighthouse

Couple

Surfers

It was getting dark, I was walking to the opposite side of town along the beach.

Beach at dusk

Then I continued my way on the dunes. It felt like hours.

Dunes at dusk

Las Palmas

The next day, before my flight, I visited the La Cantera beach in Las Palmas. Usually city beaches are not that nice, but this one was great. The water was warm too.

La Cantera Beach & promenade

Beautiful La Cantera Beach

The adventure continues: I’m flying to Tenerife.

Gran Canaria Airport

Plane