Coming Home: Nov. 13 La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain

La Palmalicious

La Palma is a smaller island than Tenerife, and nicer too. We spent most of the day wondering around the city with its many shops. We gathered some final souvenirs from our trip. We attempted to get a city bus to take us up to the rain forests that we could see higher up in the hills where the clouds met the land, but unfortunately we were thwarted. By the time we had got the information, the bus had already left with an hour and a half sitting in between us and the next bus, which would only allow us 20 minutes in the rain forest before we needed to return to the cruise ship. By the time that second bus arrived we decided to just spend the rest of the time wondering around instead. We bought a little of almost all of their touristy goods which included jewelry made from volcanic rock and coral, salsas, hand rolled cigars (many Cubanos moved to the Canaries when Castro came into power,) and honey rum. We smuggled the honey rum on board and found it goes well into just about anything, but when combined with lemonade is particularly yummy. Given that this was our last European Union stop, we counted up our remaining Euros (all 9 of them) and struggled to find something at that price. Courtney succeeded with a pair of volcanic rock ear rings. Of course upon returning to the ship, Courtney found 8 Euro more in one of her bags.