The capital of Gran Canaria Island is Las Palmas, the same name is used for the Airport at witch every tourist arrives.

I stayed in a 2 Star categorized apartment and also in a 3 star categorized apartment. If you would like to have cheap holidays, its the best to book an 2 star apartment without breakfast or other meals because there are many abilities to get cheap food in San Fernando at some supermarkets located in the north of Playa del Inglés. The best place is Mercadona.

The main time for holidays is september till may. So in this time the prices per week goes up to 500 Euro per person without any meal. The cheapest time is the summertime from June till August. In these months you can book a week for less then 200 Euro per person.

A very good apartment would be Don Diego or Don Gregory. Both are located very central in Playa del Ingles.

A must seen on the island is “Roque Nublo” the highest mountain on the island.

Another beautiful place is Puerto de Mogan, this small city looks like Venice. There you can make an nautical trip with a submarine. I was very impressed and liked it very much.

The biggest event in the year is carnival (later then the rest of Europe), and the Maspalomas pride. The pride is especially for gay people. The carnival parade is one of the biggest party’s at the island. I liked the party after the parade at the yumbo shopping centre, called “fiesta de la noche”. Had much fun.

It is named after Alfredo Kraus, a famous spanish tenor who died in 1999 and was considered to be one of the last Grandseigneurs of opera. Designed by the architect Oscar Tusquets and the sculptor Juan Bordes it was first opened on December 5th in 1997.

The auditory hosts many cultural and social events like the annual Canary Islands’ Music Festival, wich takes place at each years beginning, or the Las Palmas of Gran Canaria Film Festival, which is organized in corporation with the city council of Las Palmas.

Throughout the year many events are running in the auditory. Many own concerts, as well as the Las Palmas Philharmony Society concerts and the annual Jazz and Guitar Festivals are taking place in here.

But also modern acts can be seen here, as it’s the cutural and social centre of the city.

WOMAD festivals take place in over 20 countries, on 4 continents.

The original idea of Peter Gabriel – the founder of the festival, was to evoke interest in celebrating, and first of all, in sharing the world music, arts and dance.

WOMAD in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is a real feast for those who seek for great multicultural atmosphere in a beautiful surrounding. It also gives the opportunity to taste the food and to buy souvenirs from all around the globe.

It is a place, where you can just “taste the world”.

if not the most famous, ‘fiesta’ on Gran Canaria is “La Rama“, which literally means ‘the branch’ but is at the same time short for “La Bajada de la Rama” or ‘the descent of the branch’, is held every year in August 4th, which would be tomorrow.

Traditionally the celebration is about going up the valley of Agaete dancing to the sound of a marching band, getting some tree branches, previously taken from trees in the ‘tamadaba forrest’, and taking them down (always dancing) to the ‘port of Las Nieves’ (the port of Agaete) to Our Lady of Las Nieves, who reside in the port hermitage, as an offering, after hitting the ports’ waters with them.

The mayor and the different neighbourhood associations of Agaete have decided not to carry branches this year, as a gesture of solidarity for the catastrophe suffered by the island due to the forrest fires. Only a few selected people, the usual devotees, will carry some, and the rest will get green handkerchiefs at the same place where they would normally get their branch.

Wow…, i got no words for this…
That is a really really nice gesture.

to provide sunshine wherever it’s needed and we on Gran Canaria fortunately have plenty of it. The Red Cross organizes from this monday till mid september and initiative to help handicaped people enjoy the beach as much as we do. The “leisure at the beach program” gives people with mobility problems the oportunity to take walk at the shore or a dip of the ‘Las Canteras‘ beach in Las Palmas.

For those living in Las Palmas the program includes a “pick-up service” in the morning for those who need it and then from 11:30 till 16:30, several volunteers will help take care of them. Other activities are planed too, swapping the seashore with visits to different places of Gran Canaria.

Now that is one good news i think. Great guys!!

here on the isle, and everywhere else. The simpsons make it to hollywood in “The Simpsons Movie”. The official release date is this friday (27/07/07) but some theatres will screen it tomorrow. This weekend was the pre-release in the small town of Springfield, in the US state of Vermont, who won the airing of this movie in their town after a voting contest with 13 other Springfields’.

Yesterday was the premiere in L.A.(California) with about 300 invited guests. The Simpsons as a show for its own celebrate this year their 18 years of airing, with 400 episodes yet aired in 18 seasons, but “the Simpsons-franchise” celebrate their 20th birthday since it first started to see the light in April 1987 in “The Tracey Ullman Show”.

Whatever your age, sex, political orientation or religion is, i think this movie will be great!!

Don’t think it’s intentionally but a students life is busy while the exams last.
Please be patient, i finish this Tuesday and hopefully be posting again from then onwards

Thank you, Rayco.

Don’t get alarmed tonight,

if the entire island seems to be submerged in chaos with bonfires everywhere. We are neither under attack nor have been hit by a meteor shower.
If you don’t have nothing to do tonight, i higly recomend you wherever you are on the isle, but specially those near to the Playa del Inlges (San Bartolomé) and the Canteras (Las Palmas) beaches to visit these beaches around 12:00 PM.

Like every year in june, normally coinciding with days around the summer solstice, the night of the 23rd to 24th, we celebrate
“San Juan”. In this peculiar festivity there is a large fireworks spectacle and people make huge bonfires almost everywhere but the bigest are seen at the beaches. This was originally made to “strengthen the sun”, since the days will get shorter every day until the winter solstice.

You should witness this festivity, it is very spectacular.

June 8th the CAAM, the spanish acronym for Atlantic Center for Modern Art, offers an ‘open night’ due to the ‘Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely’ exhibition titled L’Art et L’Amour. The center will not close its doors at 9 p.m. as usually and will remain open till 12 p.m. for this ‘open night’.

The exhibition will also include the performance of the ‘Rayko León Trío’ jazz group, but you will also be able to visit the rest of exhibition rooms of this museum.

I won’t be able to go but if anybody is, don’t hesitate to comment on this. I think It’ll be interesting to read more about it.

May 30th is the ‘dia de canarias‘, that is literally, the canaries day. The ‘dia de canarias’ celebrates the aniversary of the first session of the canarian parliament held in 1983, 10 months after we were publicly declared an autonomous region.

A lot of municipalities decorate the streets and organize special events. I would like to focus on th municipality of Mogan, where there’ll be a lot of interesting things done. Today will be the official start of the ‘San Antonio’ festivities in Mogan. At the 30th there will be a craftwork and gastronomy fair held in the ‘Plaza de las Marañuelas’ in Arguineguin at 18:00 which is something i highly recomend you.

Have a nice ‘canaries day’

There you go again,

big screen time with the (aparently) last part of this amazing adventure ‘saga’. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is the title of Disney’s last top production. Its’ official realease date was supposed to be on may 25th but Disney decided finally to release it a day earlier. Therefore, tomorrow is the big date.

Casting returnees are Johnny Depp (Captain Jack Sparrow), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann) and Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa) with Chow Yun Fat making his first appearance as singapore pirate Sao Feng.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards makes a star appearance as Jack Sparrows father.

Oh, this makes now clear why he fell from a coconut palm a couple of months ago… …he was practicing his pirate role

One of these days i’ll finish uploading all the info on the main page on appartments and homes to rent, hotels, cottages, etc… here on Gran Canaria. When i have everything uploaded i’ll post again with all the main links, but i think you’ll find it very interesting to have a look at its’ content.

Stay tuned for the upcoming info.

where i posted the different museums on the isle but with their spanish names, so i thought to myself they wouldn’t mean anything to you if you didn’t live here for a long time or even speak spanish.

Therefore here is a downloadable file for those of you who would like a printable version of the table. Plus, i added som extra info, a small description so you’d know what the museums are all about.
I hope its usefull: Museums

posted a comment the Vegueta post, asking for some information about some museums here on the isle. Since i think this is something interesting to know for everybody, i prefer posting it as a normal post rather than as a response on a comment.

Here are the different museums:

and you’re planing to take a trip to Las Palmas, i would highly recomend you the ‘old part’ of the city, Vegueta. In this beautiful area, which is being renewed to be only pedestrian, you can find the market of Vegueta and several restaurants in which you can enjoy typical canarian food. I personally would recomend you “El Herreño”.

The streets of Vegueta are very beautiful, have a look:

You can also find in Vegueta, the “house of Columbus” which is a museum about Chistopher Columbus.

I suppose that the ones who read and follow this blog are actual tourists or potential tourists, or even people from any country that have settled down here.

For all those i have to thank you, since due to the last “sectorial service plan”, the 36.2% of the canarian “Gross Domestic Product” is given by tourism. This also means that tourism represents a 37.3% of the entire canarian employement. 90.0% of our exported services are by means of tourism too.

So, once again… thank you.

a pretty cool radio station in english language here in the south of Gran Canaria. I gotta figure out their broadcasting range but i have to give them a big plus.

It’s “Radio Top 21” on the 92.0 FM

Actually “Radio Top 21” also broadcasts in spanish on 95.9 FM but the broadcast is different on the two. Though i think it’s the same station.

Thumbs up guys!! keep it going…

is the last carnival weekend. Last weeks saturday the carnival queen of maspalomas was elected. Cristina Mahuego was the winning candidate wearing a dress named "La Joya del Nilo" (the Jewel of the Nile) representing the "El Muelle" Shopping Center in Las Palmas.

Yesterday night took place the Drag Queen Gala and tomorrow will be the big carnival parade going through all “Playa del Ingles”, Gran Canarias‘ “touristic heart” in San Bartolomé.

As almost every carnival event we highly recomend you to have a look at it. You surely won’t be disappointed.

said goodbye to their carnival fests burning the typical huge sardine, made out of wire and paperpaste. Normally during the “sardines’ burying” all the participants in this parade dress like widows spending the entire parade crying out loudly.

This is our typical way of ending the carnival festivities and every city that has a carnival parade has this “burying” and is pretty funny.

If you have the oportunity to see this, i recomend it to you.

between farmers and “finca” propietors have started this initiative in order to promote the culturing of this tree. It’s ment to define different varieties of this species, look for one which is better for general production purposes and eventually breed new species. They’re also in charge of establishing other ways of marketing this product, since almonds have been a very important procduct in the last decades.

The municipalities taking part in this association are mainly Tejeda and Valsequillo, but other colindant areas dedicated to this trees’ culturing.

That is a good initiative. My “tip of the hat” for these people.

was the main carnival parade in Las Palmas which, according to the city’s “local police” mobilized about 200.000 people between viewers and participants. Pirates, policemen, prostitues, devils, men dressed as women, politicians, judges, attorneys and a huge et cetera lived up this years parade, which started at 17:00 at the “Castillo de la Luz” in the area known as “el Puerto”.

90 floats and decorated cars took part in this picturesque event, makin it come to an end around midnight. The animators on the floats also mentioned how well and ‘sweet’ the parade was going in contrast to the ‘sourness’ Tenerife had to be going through due to the controversy created at the Carnival Queen Gala which was directed by dancer Rafael ‘Amargo’ (which actually means SOUR).

Well, that unfortunately, will teach us not to bring people in who do not understand our carnival.

Las Palmas‘ night-life is completely stuck on carnival. The carnival queen has been elected, the “murgas” contest has already a winner and it’s still not over. This weekend, “the big weekend”, the most picturesque show is still to be run. The “judges” have made their decision, electing the 15 final candidates from out of 28, to be finalists and take part in this spectacular show, The Drag-Queen show.

It’ll be presented by spanish actress “Loles Leon” and will start at 21:00, at the stage of the “Santa Catalina” park. The show will feature the star performance of Gloria Gaynor.

I’ll try to make some pics and post them. This show is highly recomendable and you surely wouldn’t want to miss it. Just Great

more or less the first or second week of february, one of the most picturesque, atractive and traditional fests of Gran Canaria take place in Tejeda and in Valsequillo the week after. When the almond tree flowers sprout, announcing the begining of spring-time, the center of the island, where these trees grow, turns into one of the most beautiful landscapes you could possibly imagine.

Have a look at some pictures of it in Tejeda:

Thanks to Jose and his sister for the pics.

this will be a good news for you. The “Perez Galdós” theatre in Las Palmas that is being renewed is coming to an end. The 1016 new seats have been already installed are were presented by Las Palmas mayor “Pepa Luzardo”.

The seats have translators in which the spoken or sung text being interpreted will be shown in 7 different languages. This system and the stages’ motorized features are said by the architect in charge of the project to be the most difficult things to build. The air conditioning system and the curtains are already set up. When fnished, it is said to be the 3rd biggest theatre in Spain, right after Madrids’ “royal theatre” and Barcelonas’ “Liceo”.

Well then, nice to be known for that. The grand opening will be in April.

and i must say "what a deception". I truly expected more from it due to the good publicity they gave to it. If you’d like to go to the movies here, there’s a possibility. The "Yelmo Cineplex" cinema at the "Atlantico Shopping Center" in Vecindario(Santa Lucia) offers movies shown in it’s original language (normally english). So you might want to go, chek out the movies playing now:

Personally i’ve just seen “The Departed” and it’s very good, but i’ve been told that “A Good Year” is also worth seing.

the terraces will be structured in a different way. Due to past years access problem to them, the organization has decided to install 3 terraces. Two of them, “Can Can” and “Charlot”, in a closed space and the third one named “Boulevard” will will have no areal restrictions. “Boulevard” will then consist of 30 refreshment stalls, the so called “chiringuitos”.

Beside this, there will be 30 “chiringuitos” more of which (grancanariagay.com listen up ) 16 will be the as “chiringay” known stalls specially for the gay/lesbian comunity.
Also there’ll be 2 taverns, 3 fritter stalls, 9 candy stalls, 5 hamburger stalls and 5 other different stalls that’ll get along with the night life.

Have Fun!!

This last three days, the three phases of the “Murgas” contest had taken place at the “Santa Catalina” park in Las Palmas. A “Murga” (spelled:”moorgah” ) is a group of, normally 15 or more, people who dress up usually all the same and perform on the stage singing acid and critic lyrics dealing with politics as well as problems of todays society with a lot of humor and irony. Normally the songs are performed on popular songs, but with their own lyrics, just accompained with percussion and every members kazoo.

This constest is very popular on the canary islands and due to their acid humor and irony always something to laugh about, since normally if they don’t sing about politics in general (Spain-wide) “Murgas” from Las Palmas mock Tenerife and viceversa.

The finals of this contest are held tomorrow at 20:00 with free entrance at the “Santa Catalina” park. I’ll try topost some pictures asap. If you’re interested about it……drop by.

like every year around this date, it’s time to start thinking about carnival. Since we have a one of the most picturesque carnival celebrations and unique Drag Queen Galas. This will probably mean more to the gay community on the isle, but anyway, i’m pround to announce that the main performer at the 2007 Drag Queen Gala in Las Palmas will be no other than “Gloria Gaynor” together with “Bananarama“.

The carnival in Las Palmas will start february 2nd and end the 24th. Their theme this year: Belle Epoque.
 - Election of the Carnival Queen: february 9th
 - Drag Queen Gala: february 16th
 - The Big Carnival Parade: february 17th

The carnival here in Maspalomas/Playa del Ingles, San Bartolomé, will be from february 22nd till march 4th and will officially be inspired the Europe of the early 20′s.
 - Election of the Carnival Queen: february 24th
 - Drag Queen Gala: march 2nd
 - The Big Carnival Parade: march 3rd

How you like that !!… Oh and by the way, greetings to the people of grancanariagay.com. Thanks for your support guys.

Through almost every town or city on the isle, there are parades organized. Since Christmas in Spain has its emphasis on the “3 Wise Men’s Day”, every year there is a parade where people reenact the arrival of the 3 Wise Men to the Nativity, bringing presents for the born lord. In this case, they always take a trip around the a certain route, riding their camels and waving at the children and throwing caramels at them, to end up in a square where they’ll sit down on their thrones. This is the point where their pages bring children to them and sit them on their loins where they can tell the “3 Magic Kings”, how they them them here, what presents they want or they can give them the famous “letter” with their wishes.

The on i’m informed about is the one in my town, San Fernando de Maspalomas, San Bartolomé. It will begin at 17:00 at the parking lot in front of the municipal soccer stadium, where they’ll arrive by helicopter. (haha kinda funny) They will make their route and end up at the “San Fernando square”.

You might want to have a look at one of our traditional festivities.

and till Friday you can visit this yearly fair in which almost 90 craftsmen present their work from 34 different professions. The fair is situated at the “San Telmo” park in Las Palmas, which is the park right next to the same named main bus station. You can reach this station from almost every corner of the isle simply by taking the bus. Here are the time-tables:GLOBAL

The promoters of this event state that 20.000 people could visit this fair in this few days, due to the closeness of the three wise mens’ day, the main celebration Christmas day in Spain. It’s sales volume is forseen to reach the 250.000€ mark.

As a canario, i definitely recommend you this event if you’re willing to bring back home something different or just would like to have a look at canarian handmade goods.