Lanzarote

Lanzarote

To be 100% honest, I am writing this section with 5 months of a delay. And actually, I was playing with the idea, to not to have it here at all. To compromise between those two decisions, I've decided to make a short notice. First of all, the problem of that island is, that IT IS AN ISLAND and it is in the middle of nowhere. As the spanish culture does not really have the cocktails underneath its skin, finding a place focused on cocktails over here, is almost impossible. I didn't find any good cocktail bars at all. And yes, I have been in a few places. But lets get to the beginning.

I was traveling there with my two good friends and we rented a car and in three days we have seen every corner of that island. To be honest, if You do not plan to stay on a beach doing nothing except of drinking 12 beers every day(!), You don't need more than 3 days . National Park of Volcanic activity is probably the best thing to see as well as Mirrador Del Rio. Those two places are MUST SEE. If I will consider, that You will stay in the same city as we did (Puerto Del Carmen) You will have to go across the island to see them and on the way to Mirrador Del Rio You will see the entire south-west coast and on the way from Mirrador Del Rio to this National Park You will see the North-east coast and that is one half of this island already…

The other thing is, that I am not really sure, if this island is spanish.  There are mostly english people, having english companies or hotels or hostlels or english restaurants with english menu offering even full english breakfast, everywhere. And the tourists are obviously english, too. It took us 2 ½ days to find a typical spanish restaurant, offering spanish food and we had to go really far from Puerto Del Carmen.

Then one of those days my friend asked one of the ´´tourist catchers´´ (people standing in front of the restaurant trying to get You in), if she knows about some club, or good bar, where we can at least see some young people, because when we were staying on Lanzarote, the avarage age on the beach was 62+/- and in the city ´´center´´ it was not much lower.

This tourist catcher told us about one ´´very famous´´ club and one bar in the main area, close to the coast, very close to the main street - also called by my friend - Tourist Highway. In that club we found completely empty dancing area, group of five ladies in age of 50, two guys from morocco, selling touristic party stuff (flushing horns, fake noses and sunglasses with fake eyes) two couples and 1 ½ bartending girls in age of 18 – 19. I said ½, beause in the whole duration of our visit (well that visit was maybe not long enough) this girl was wearing bartending clothes but she was just sitting on a bar stool, smoking and putting cherries on stirrers into the rum and coke.

The desing of that place was… well… with all my respect and politeness… let's call it under-the-bridge-modern architecture. Basically, there are two buildings close to each other. One is in a little hill from one side, so it is hidden from the north a bit. The other building is on the south and there are two restaurants above each other. In the first building, there is a terrace connected to the main restaurant in the other building  by a massive ´´bridge´´ and underneath is this bridge you can find this ´´famous´´ club. This structure - made of two buildings, two restaurants and a club - is very SADLY built from white concrete bloks and it is dirty. And in this passage under the bridge, You will find few chairs, tables and an entrance to the bar and its dancing area.

You are not really inside or outside. You are NOT sitting INSIDE the bar and this feeling is multiplied by people passing around or by the fact, that You can feel the air moving trough the passage, but You are NOT quite OUTSIDE, because You are surrounded by concrete from three sides…

Well now about the stuff, that we ordered. If I am not sure about the place, I always take something simple. Cuba libre / gin and tonic. In this bar I was not feeling very confident since I've seen the place, so the choice was clear and my friends followed me. Instead of cuba libre I've got rum with color of coke and with cocktail cherry in it. My friends got gin and tonic and rum and coke too, and like a bonus, one more of each of it and one big ´´party cocktail´´ made of Passoa liqueur, grenadine, orange  juice and closely not specified amout of vodka. So instead of three drinks, we found 6 full glasses and a big 1½ liter ´´jug´´ of party cocktail. For the same price?  I don't want to look posh or spoiled, but.. well it didn't really increase my confidence. The Second ´´Cuba Libre/Manhattan´´ cocktail I didn't even finish and we decided to leave.

Leaving was not easy either. Just 5 meters away from this ´´club´´ and still inside the passage we got surrounded by 7 guys from Morocco, that were trying to sell us some tickets to some other places or touristic party stuff and so on.. but we politely said, that we don't want anything , and when they've realized, that we won't buy anything, they stopped doing jokes, they surrounded us even more closely and they were asking for money ..  I will never forget the face of that main guy, who was probably the leader of all of them and who was 30 centimeters taller than me (and trust me, I am not really dwarf) and the very specific way of him saying : ,,MONY, MONY, GIFF US YUR MONY.´´ But fortunatelly, there was a group of maybe 20 people passing around and when these guys noticed them, they did few steps back, we moved away and they've got lost somewhere in the the streets behind this passage.

After visiting this place, we went straight back to the main Tourist Highway on the coast, but we didn't want to miss the good cocktail bar, that the ''tourist catcher'' told us about. We gave her one more chance and we found this bar very easily, because the description was : ,,Look for the bar on the coast-side of the street, where are some cocktails pictured above the wooden chairs and tables on the whole lenght of the roof.´´ Bingo. We came in and sat down.

The Service and look of the bar was ok. Actually to be fair, the service was great. If You order some simple mix like Gin and Tonic, the waiter/bartender comes to your table with the whole bottle of Gin, glass properly chilled with ice and a tonic, bottled in small bottles (this is a great point, smaller bottles are great for multiple reasons) . While he still has this plate only on the fingertips, he openes the bottle of a Gin and freepoured (precisely)  the certain amount of gin inside the glass, and just after that, he puts it on your table. Impresive style. However those are the last good points.

This bar is a great example of how to NOT TO DO a cocktail bar. All those cocktails, that were pictured all around and EVEN in the menu, were looking differently from what You ordered...

And then my friend got pina colada served in wine glass, with a small pink plastic umbrella and the entire botanical garden - cherries, grapes, piece of pineaple, apple and strawberries as a garnish and then the best thing at the end: 

 My Mojito came in a Martini glass…

As I said at the beginning, You don't need more than three days to visit Lanzarote.  We had 5 days in total and last two days we had nothing to do or nowhere to go. After last night, when we almost had a fight and got totally disapointed in two places, we decided to stay on a beach for the rest of our holidays, we did nothing at all and we were drinking 12 beers a day.  Some people say, that to go to Canarian Islands You are supposed to do nothing. You just stay on a beach and that's it. Maybe my expectations were a little different, or maybe its not a great place for people like me, but to fly 4000 kilometers to sit on a beach… well to me it is pointless.

However, the whole island is situated like that, which means that a lot of people are actually doing it. Lanzarote is a place, that I am happy, I was able to see, but I will never come back.