Gran Canaria, here we come!

It all happened very suddenly. Martin, our friend whose place in Gran Canaria we spent some time in two years ago, got in touch and offered us the use of his place again. We'd accepted, finalised flights and had everything organised all within the space of a week. Today was the start of a ten-day stay in Playa del Ingles, courtesy of Martin.

We flew Ryanair direct from Dublin, a flight which took the guts of four hours but flew past and turned out to be most enjoyable. We arrived at Las Palmas around 6:30 pm and transferred to a coach we'd booked through Travel Republic, an excellent and amazingly reasonable service recommended by Martin. Even the trip from the airport to our bungalow complex took less time than we expected, and we were quickly ensconced. After a meal in the restaurant in the complex, we made it over to the Yumbo Centre and sampled a couple of the bars.

It was quite a late night, despite our best intentions.

The blip was somewhere off the west coast of Africa, between Portugal and The Canaries. It was gloriously bright and clear, and I'd been fascinated by the boats which were visible below. You can hopefully make out the a wake to the left of huge plane's engine housing.