Some island cruising - The Canaries and Sicily, then Milan

RooFlyer · 2026-04-10T19:44:01+1000

Dinner on the outside terrace of the main a la carte restaurant.

Tonight's menu

And here is part of the wine list for purchase. I have a lot of credit to get through! (Although I ended up buying a bunch of clothes as well). I get a 25% status discount on anything I buy on board. @Daver6, @TheRealTMA (or anyone) - comments?

I bought this on the sommelier's recommendation. Amuse bouche

Sardines; and finishing off the Riesling I bought before.

Duck margret

Cheese plate and a rum baba.

Sitting quite contented afterwards. The view was clear until this monstrosity reversed into its berth, behind us.

SYD · 2026-04-10T19:57:43+1000

RooFlyer said:
Note the absence of a centre line.

View attachment 503223

Centrelines? Luxury compared to driving around Cornwall - single lane roads, 12ft high hedge rows either side, blind corners and ridiculously high speed limits! Exciting stuff - SYD+1 begged to disagree

.

I now want to go back to the Canary Islands and do some road trips!

SYD · 2026-04-10T20:00:34+1000

RooFlyer said:
Duck margret

View attachment 503253

One of my favourite Spanish dishes!

Something they do particularly well and obviously not the same ducks we get here. The first time a had it on BCN, I thought it was sirloin! Yum.

TheRealTMA · 2026-04-10T20:03:03+1000

RooFlyer said:
Dinner on the outside terrace of the main a la carte restaurant.

Tonight's menu

View attachment 503245

And here is part of the wine list for purchase. I have a lot of credit to get through! (Although I ended up buying a bunch of clothes as well). I get a 25% status discount on anything I buy on board. @Daver6, @TheRealTMA (or anyone) - comments?

View attachment 503246 View attachment 503247

View attachment 503248 View attachment 503249

I bought this on the sommelier's recommendation. Amuse bouche

View attachment 503251 View attachment 503250

Sardines; and finishing off the Riesling I bought before.

View attachment 503252

Duck margret

View attachment 503253

Cheese plate and a rum baba.

View attachment 503254 View attachment 503255

Sitting quite contented afterwards. The view was clear until this monstrosity reversed into its berth, behind us.

View attachment 503256

Looks very nice.
Nice wine list. Jealous!

Suggest.
Mendoza Chardonnay
Pouilly-Fuissé
Bouchard Père & Fils Meursault
Andre Brunel Les Cailloux Chateauneuf du Pape

Pushka · 2026-04-10T20:33:45+1000

"Sélection de glaces et sorbets"

Always sounds so much nicer than ice cream. Menu looked fab.

Do we get to see the new clothes?

RooFlyer · 2026-04-11T04:50:26+1000

This morning we are at Santa Cruz de Tenerife and I'm looking forward to a bus trip up to the mountain that dominates the island - and those around it, El Teide or Mount Teide or Pico del Teide and which used to be called the Peak of Tenerife. (BTW, anyone familiar with Frenchman's Cap in Tasmania might know that it was originally called 'The Peak of Tenerife'

).

Looking out my suite window in the morning showed just a tiny part of Santa Cruz, which has a wider urban population of about 500,000.

Our route.

After we left the urban area, we entered a forest of Canary Island pine, Pinus canariensis. It has several characteristics - the needles are in groups of threes (usually two), and get very long (up to 20cm) but most significantly, they are fire resistant and regenerate after being burned. Most pines die in a fire and the forest takes decades to re-establish. We are here

A fire went through in 2022 I think, and you can see not only the forest still alive, but the trees re-shooting.

A shot for the botanists out there.

Then at a stop - El Teide. We will be going up to where it flattens out at the very far centre left of the photos. Early this year was very wet in the Canaries, so there was a lot of snow on Teide, hence a lot surviving until now.

And around the corner, we see the cluster of observatories taking advantage of the elevation.

View a bit further on - we drive right through this landscape to the foot of the peak.

RooFlyer · 2026-04-11T05:18:34+1000

We entered the Canadas caldera which semi surrounds El Teide - caldera is the 3/4 circle structure W, S and E of the peak, which has the dark lava flows draping off it.

The peak, with lava flows stopped in their tracks. Wikipedia:

Its summit at 3,715 m is the highest point in Spain and the highest of any island in the Atlantic Ocean. Measured from its base on the ocean floor, Teide reaches a total height of 7,500 m, making it the third-tallest volcano in the world; UNESCO and NASA also rank it as Earth's third-tallest volcanic structure. Its elevation above sea level makes Tenerife the tenth-highest island in the world.

There is a cable car going most of the way to the top of the mountain!

Ultimately we reached the National Park visitor's centre, where there is also A Parador hotel, where we had some refreshments.

We had an hour or so here, to wander around, There are a number of rocky features and as usual, many tourists visiting.

Spoiler: Things are going to get geological - but near with me.

The red-brown is from an eruption from Teide in about 1790. The most recent eruption was in 1909. The mountains in the background are part of that caldera I mentioned earlier.

And a panorama

RooFlyer · 2026-04-11T05:43:38+1000

And this is where it gets interesting - truly!

That caldera. A volcano caldera is usually shaped like a volcanic crater but unlike a volcanic crater, which forms by blowing stuff out, the caldera forms after stuff is blown out, and the volcanic cone collapses down on top of the empty magma chamber below, leaving a ~circle of raised edge.

A Canarian volcanologist worked out what has happened here.

The caldera, now 10km across and up to 2km deep (!!) - or the remaining 3/4 of it, formed after the collapse of a volcano which formed 4 million - 0.5 million years ago and was much higher than the 3,700m high Teide. About 200,000 years ago, the north side of the entire complex collapsed, creating a massive landslide into the sea. Something like that happening today is unimaginable.

So, I lied again. The Canadas caldera isn't from the collapse of a volcano upon itself, but the wholesale slide of the guts of the volcano down to the sea.

Then, about 170,000 years ago, the Teide stratavolcano started forming, building on the remnant of the Canadas caldera and its lavas have re-filled much of the caldera depression.