Oh deary me. Tenerife scores again big time today. For everything we needed to do I looked things up on maps and printed them out ahead of time.
The occasion: the
Honda had to go in for its year 2 service. I had booked the appointment and we headed to Los Majuelos for 0900. The new dealer is called
Hatobito. Dropped car off, everything okay.
The plan was to take the
tram to Santa Cruz to run errands. We walked about 10 minutes to the tram, (past the northern Merc dealer and don't think that didn't give me the heebee-jeebees) bought tickets, and were off. Tickets are 1.35€ per person for a single. Machines are a breeze. You just put your ticket in as you board and if you put it in upside down a handy young lady passenger will correct you.
We got off at
Plaza Weyler. First stop, the Palacio Hindú where I love to shop. They had a sale on but nothing I wanted so despite having tried a few things on we headed off. The point is, I got to stop in and look. Great!
Then it was on to
TV Nalber, a short walk from Weyler. It is THE place in Santa Cruz for radioaficionados (hams), people who need electrical equipment and cables, anything electronic. etc. OH placed his order online yesterday and we walked in and it was fulfilled. No problem, no fuss. Went to the neighbouring Nalber to buy an analog to digital converter for my PC speakers, again, achieved in seconds.
It was now only about 10.30. And we were off to the
Polar distributor (as in my broken heart rate monitor) not far away. On foot once again. One hitch: they are on Calle de la Rosa, number 22. We watched as it counted down from 38.....got to 26...20. Uh oh, what's wrong? We asked the shopkeeper at number 20 about the place we were trying to find and he pointed us down-number. That's right, it goes from 38....26...20...back up to 22. Naturally.
My HRM is under a 2-year warranty and was purchased from Amazon.co.uk in December 2012. Are we gearing up for a rant?
I was. We walked in and I verified that we were in the right place, the authorised distributor/service centre and told him the problem. One problem is that the belt was recording heart rates in excess of 200bpm for me when I
start running (my max heart rate is 170-ish), not after reaching the top of a tough hill. The other is that the watch is chewing batteries - 4 weeks max when it should be about once a year. The guy was aghast, checked the belt and confirmed it was working fine and that the watch was the problem. I left the whole kit and kaboodle with him to send to Barcelona who will take a few weeks to sort it out. And he'll call me. That part was tested when I left the shop with the guarantee and he had to call me to bring it back.
On our return we had to play with his two adorable little dogs once again, one of whom is madly in love with me. I do give a good tummy scratch.
From there, on to the port. As reported the other day
when I ticked the box when booking a ferry for them to verify our resident status, the system came back and said it could not. Therefore I could not print the ticket and I could not check us in when the time came.
We entered the
Armas office which had two women working and it was full of 300 screaming people who had been there for 8 hours. Nah, just kidding, I just walked up to a window and explained to the lovely Maria Rodriguez the problem, and handed over all the documentation. She performed magic keystrokes and that was that and printed the billetes. It seems that because I did not enter our middle names, it was impossible for the system to verify our status. Now, what we don't know is, does the system think our middle names are our first last names and our last names our second last names. For another time.
It was not even noon and it was off to
El Corte Inglés where like certain of our other members I had a certain need.
That's right, it was something from the lencería department. Having looked up lots of vocabulary relating to the purchase of sujetadores, I entered the department with OH and we agreed to part ways and he would come back shortly.
I...hate...this...part. Started looking around and there was plenty to choose from for those requiring over the shoulder boulder holders. My requirements are so modest as to not need mention. Anyway a nice lady came up and wanted to help me so for once in my life I let her. No aros and no relleno were the requirements. She took me to every single sujetador which met those conditions, we selected a few and she took me to the changing rooms where she discreetly checked in on me every few minutes and ran off and got different sizes. What a goddamned gem. I walked away with new garments.
Like Perikles's, they have someone else's name on them but I am not bovvered. Innit.
Just about 1300 and the Honda dealer had not called. What to do? We were hungry so found ourselves near
La Hierbita as recommended by
@Prof (
) so decided to plunk ourselves down for lunch. They have to have about the best mojo rojo y verde anywhere. Had lunch and a couple of jarras. Bliss. Then off to the Teatro Guimará tram station for the trip back to the Honda dealer.
On the way we decided to scrap the visit to Decathlon (just an excuse to spend money for no reason) and Ikea (we will be going up again soon anyway).
So that left our lovely favourite that
@Pelinor put us on to,
Leroy Merlin,
. We needed a couple of filtre-jobbies for the solar water heater and some fluorescent tubes and starters. Today, we simply walked up to the employees in the respective departments and told them what we wanted and they guided us to the aisles and presto, we were done and dusted. We then spent some boring time in the outside part where OH inspected and measured scaffolding. Yawn.
After that, we bid our lovely capital city and its environs a fond farewell and came back to our side of the island.
I cannot believe we managed to get so much done in one day running around by tram and foot but we did. Three cheers for Tenerife and Santa Cruz/La Laguna!!!!!
