Paris Adventures: gran canaria

so on tuesday morning zaid and i left early for gran canaria! we were both very excited to get to the beach and just lounge all day! however, we chose to stay in las palmas, which is the capital city and on the north side of the island. for anyone who is thinking of going this is a MISTAKE. DO NOT stay in las palmas! las palmas is a city that you visit from the south of the island. it really is just a city, and it rains there a lot. so the first day we got to our hostel, which was really...interesting. we had our own room and our own bathroom but the bathroom was not fully enclosed, it was open at the top so you could talk to each other while someone was in the bathroom.... so our arrival on gran canaria was a little bit of a letdown. but we rallied and decided we needed food so we walked trying to find an open place, which we found, and it was a local place where we got huge bocadillos for SO CHEAP. it was amazing. we got cokes, and 2 big sandwiches each, and neither of us knew how much it was going to be, but each of us though to ourselves, ok, this was a big sandwhich, i'm ok paying 5 euro for this sandwhich. our total bill was 7 euro. great. then we walked down to the beach, but by this point it had clouded up and was starting to rain, so we went to an i nternet cafe to figure out what we would do with our lives for the rest of our time in gran canaria. so we looked at places to go out that night etc, and then we were talking about going to the south of the island the next day for the whole day and so we were trying to figure out the buses to come back, we decided to just completly move there since the buses stopped early. so we found a place to stay and moved there the next day.
the night however, another epic adventure ensued.
whilest at the airport we got a flyer for outlet malls and the flyer said there was a mango and a zara outlet so that basically equalled katherine's heaven. it also said we could get there by public transportation, so we go to the bus station, and ask at information, and the lady there tells us to get on bus 80, so we go to bus 80 and ask the very nice man "las terrazas?" and show him a flyer and he goes no, so we start to walk away, but the guy must take pity on us, cause he honks at us (that was loud!) and tells us to sit down and he'll take us to the bus we need to take. so he takes us to the other bus station and tells us "uno, you need one" so we go to bus one and we do the same thing with this driver "las terrazas?" and show him the flyer. the guy looks at us, and must thinkwe're nuts and sort of grimaces and says fine, but points to the first seats on the bus. so we're driving along, and after about 20 min of driving on the HIGHWAY the bus driver points at us, points at the outlets across THE HIGHWAY and points to a stop ON THE HIGHWAY and then proceeds to stop and tells us to get off. so zaid and i got off of a bus ON THE HIGHWAY and had to walk down a dirt hill to get under the highway and to the outlet complex. apparently the flyers lied about public transportation access, and the only entrance was through the parking garage which took us a long time to figure out... so when we finally got in we were a little disappointed..i did find some good things at mango...but thats about it. and we had to take a taxi back cause neither of us was enjoying the thought of walking along the highway till we came to a bus stop..... so we went back to our hostel to change and rest before going out that night, but that turned into falling asleep at like.. 10. it was ok though.
we woke up the next morning and hauled it over to the other side of the island. best decision ever. it was sunny and warm and legit a resort. so we got to our hostel which was actually this guys house that he rented two extra rooms of, and then immediately went down to the beach where we stayed for the remainder of the day. that night we went out to this really cool area which was basically a shopping mall of bars, coolest complex ever, and we went to go see a drag comedy show. i had NO idea what we got ourselves into, but it was hilarious all the same... but the jokes did get kind of old so we peaced a lil early.
the next day we went to a different part of the beach that was a farther walk but toally worth it because there were sand dunes! it was basically a little mini desert! and spent the monring/early afternoon there before heading back to shower and then catch our bus to the airport.
we were both SO exhausted. we were spending the night in madrid at my friend casey's apartment again, and we were supposed to get there around 1 and we had planned earlier in the week that we would just go straight out...since thats what time everything start anyways.... however, when we got to madrid i looked at casey and zaid and was like... uh..not happening, i was just too tired. its ok though, we woke up the next morning and went to the prado for 30 min, but i saw all that i wanted, goya and valezquez (which i cant spell...) and then we got on a flight to lisbon!
here are some pics of the canary islands:
this is the beach in las palmas: see why we were a lil disappointed?