Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain

For our last leg of the trip, we visited Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands. We stayed in downtown Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital.

We enjoyed our visit. We both agree that this was our favorite stop on the trip. We stayed three days, and could have stayed a day or two more. Santa Cruz was modern, safe, and inviting, with plenty of culture. It had a good vibe. It seemed very livable to us.

In this post, we’ll share some photos from the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts), Museo de las Ilusiones (Museum of illusions), and Parque Garcia Sanabria, a beautiful city park with sculptures and colorful plants. We’ll also share a few photos from Piramides de Güímar, a short drive south of Santa Cruz.

We also traveled to Puerto de la Cruz on the north coast, then to Mount Teide in the center of the island. Those pictures are here.

Our rental apartment was on the 27th floor of a twin-tower high-rise with amazing views. 

Here are a few pictures from the Museo de Bellas Artes.

This hotel was near the museum. This probably isn’t a good pool for skinny dipping.

The Museo de las Ilusiones was fascinating and entertaining. It featured optical and photographic illusions of all types. Here is the exterior and a few examples.

The most amazing part of our visit was a 23-minute virtual reality production created from the paintings and music of Lithuanian artist M.K. Čiurlionis. To quote the website, “Trail of Angels is an emotionally rich VR journey at the Museum of Illusions. You’ll be immersed in a meditative, symbolic afterlife where you gradually transform into angels. Inspired by the art and music of M.K. Čiurlionis, the experience blends emotion, art, and immersive design to evoke peace, wonder, and inner reflection.”

It was truly an amazing, immersive experience. After donning the VR headset, it was as if we were suspended in the center of a globe. We could turn 360 degrees in our chairs and look up and down, and be surrounded by the animated art and music. The website has some 2-D samples of the imagery to give you an idea.

After enjoying these two museums, we walked to Parque Garcia Sanabria. We enjoyed lunch at a cafe on the edge of the park, then strolled throughout the park. 

On our last day, we drove to Güímar, a 30-minute drive south of Santa Cruz, to see the Piramides de Güímar.

What remains of the pyramids wasn’t particularly impressive; it looked more like terraced landscaping. But the park contained museums packed with information about pyramids around the world, the island’s history, and gardens with plants of all sorts, including poisonous plants.

The park was founded by the famous explorer, scientist, and writer Thor Heyerdahl, and the museums included exhibits of his expeditions and the boats he built for trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific voyages. There was an overabundance of information packed into this place. Here’s a replica of one of his boats, built with reeds bound together.

Back in Santa Cruz, there was a large urban mall two blocks from our apartment. The top floor contained a large open patio where several restaurants had covered outdoor seating. We ate three of our dinners there; twice in a Mexican restaurant and once in an Italian restaurant. The food was delicious, but surprisingly, the sangria was disappointing. Despite sangria being a Spanish invention, we enjoyed better sangria in Portugal. Perhaps it’s better on the mainland. So we made other choices for our last two meals.