Posted Feb 15, 2024
Again, Gran Canaria, though we’ve now moved to an apartment in Las Palmas. We’re in the last leg of the trip now, and most of us have taken time off, which for me means swimming and sunbathing and reading and eating great food.
It’s a great time, and I am extremely happy to be here, to have been here. It’s not lost on me that I’m extremely privileged to be able to do so, to have the income to fund travel, to have a job that allows me to work remotely, to have had the time and money to get the education that enabled me to get such a job.. there are many threads to pull at, there. Thus, I would never dream of complaining about this winter getaway.
All of that said, I miss Berlin. I miss my own home, I miss cooking and eating more meals at home, I miss my friends and colleagues, my bouldering gym, my workout classes. It’s very hard to find what we consider to be good espresso-based coffee here; there’s only one place for it1, which is thankfully within easy walking distance of our residence, but there are quite a few of us and only one person working there, so we do feel a bit bad taking the amount of time it requires to fulfill the large order we put in. This is one of the silly little things that I find I miss most; in Berlin, the style of coffee we like is so commonplace that you can get it almost anywhere in the city, and usually from cafes that have more staff and are more prepared to be popular and busy.
Between the lack of workout classes/bouldering and the lovely weather, I somehow ended up going for morning runs pretty regularly for a bit. I’ve only voluntarily gone on regular runs at one other point in my life, and at the time I really hated it. That was about 10 years ago, and I’ve been convinced that I hate running since that point. But, desperate for activity, I tried again here. And I don’t entirely hate it? Don’t hate it, to the point that I ran every day for a week (including once during a wicked hangover)… until one day I realized my ankle had some dark bruising I couldn’t explain, and the next day I could barely walk on it 🙃 based on my very educated WebMD search, I probably have a low-grade strain or sprain. I feel quite silly, mostly because I’m sure I should have taken it a bit easier and that it’s my own fault I got this minor injury, and because despite it being a minor injury it has still prevented me from being active since then. Real clown behavior.
The apartments we have in Las Palmas are in a really convenient location, and are generally comfortable and functional and fine, but there is one truly comical design choice that we are still baffled by: the bathroom door. For starters, it’s frosted glass, so while the lights are on in the bathroom you can get a decent idea of what’s going on in there, blurred though it may be. To add insult to injury, the door is eeeever so slightly too small for the door frame, so there is an ability to see clearly into the bathroom if you want, or if you happen to be close and don’t avert your eyes fast enough. And here’s the kicker: the door frame is 10cm+ on either side of…mirror. Yep. An actual human had to design this! And probably multiple other people had to sign off on it! Who would do this?! We know it’s not just the apartment we’re in, too, because we couldn’t all stay together so we’re split between 2 apartments, and the layout is almost identical. So we can pretty safely extrapolate that the whole set of rental apartments in this building are kitted out in the same way. Unbelievable.
Lastly for this post, we had the accidental fortune of booking our time in Las Palmas during Gran Canaria’s Carnaval celebration. We’ve seen costumes, parades, parties, there’s confetti and glitter at the corner of every vista. Last Saturday was spent with the girlies in a whirlwhind of boy bands, mojitos, and the fluency of Spanish that only comes out when I’m tipsy enough to not be self-conscious about my mistakes. This Saturday will likely be much the same, as it’s the day of the large parade and the final day of the celebrations. Unclear whether we’ll be able to convince the boys to take part in the festivities, as it’s not really the type of party either of them enjoy, but I’m confident that whatever constellation of us attends will have a great time.
And thankfully, I’ll still have a few days after that to lay in the sun (and recover) before heading back to the land of clouds and coffee.