White Plains’ 4th Best Personal Blog

My brief sojourn on Tenerife is just about over — I’m actually at the airport waiting for my flight back to the mainland — and it’s been an interesting couple of days. It’s a place I wouldn’t mind coming back to someday and exploring further. There are a number of things I wanted to but didn’t get to see, which I’m blaming mostly on my inability to drive stick shift and trepidation about negotiating some of the supposedly treacherous roads. Among them were the primary attraction here, the Pico del Teide volcano, as well as the native black-sand beaches and some of the rock pools I read about. I also didn’t get to the town of Garachico on the western coast (which had been recommended), nor the southern part of the island (where most of the tourists go).

Regarding the latter, I’m sort of glad I didn’t make it to the south. It sounds a tad tacky — an English-speaking friend I made here likened it to Atlantic City, and I don’t think she meant that as a compliment — and overcrowded with English and German tourists and the establishments that cater to them. By contrast, I spent my time (both by necessity and design) exclusively in the north, in La Laguna and Santa Cruz. The old town of La Laguna — primarily known a college town — is a Unesco World Heritage Site, so I was happy to walk around and admire some of the beautiful buildings. From there, then it was a quick tram ride to Santa Cruz, the biggest city on the island, where I spent another pleasant afternoon wandering around before seeing the kickoff of Wilco’s Spanish tour at the Auditorio de Tenerife that night.

What I liked (and found a tiny bit challenging) about Santa Cruz was that there didn’t seem to be many English speakers around at all. There aren’t very many foreign places I’ve been to where you don’t see or overhear some group of Americans or Brits at some point. But that was one surprising aspect of Santa Cruz for me: I heard virtually no English spoken. It seemed, for better or worse, like a city in which real people lived and worked. Perhaps that made it not the ideal spot for a tourist to visit, but that was refreshing in a way.

And ultimately, how many places can you sit next to a stunning venue where you’re about to see a show and, while waiting for the doors to open, read a book on a landing that looks out on the ocean toward Africa?

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Wilco//5-23-09//Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, SPAIN//support: none

Wilco (the song)/Hummingbird/Hell Is Chrome/Handshake Drugs/IATTBYH/Pot Kettle Black/Ashes of American Flags/Bull Black Nova/You Are My Face/Jesus, etc./Impossible Germany/I’ll Fight/Poor Places>/Reservations>/Spiders (Kidsmoke)//e1: The Late Greats/Hate It Here/Walken/I’m The Man Who Loves You//e2: Misunderstood/I’m A Wheel