Arrecife, Lanzarote

All aboard in Cadiz at 2am, and we stumbled on just as the captain was ready to set sail. No, maybe I misremembered that and possibly went to bed at 9.30pm as I was a bit tired.

Two sea days have passed since then, and we arrived at Arrecife first thing this morning.

It's another lovely day and the walk from the harbour was very pretty.

The ship's leaflet did not seem to rate Arrecife very highly, and said that it did not hold huge amounts of interest for tourists, but maybe they were just trying to sell their very expensive day trips.

We started with a nice fort out in the bay and a walkway and drawbridge being the only way to reach it.

Not far along the seafront was another causeway that I had noticed on Google earth. It wasn't mentioned in the guidebooks, but was actually the highlight of the day.

Called Islote de la Fermina, it is a swimming and art space area that was designed by the artist Cesar Manrique in the 1970s. It appears to have become run down and is now almost restored.

People were still working on the swimming pool, but we stopped for coffee and a wander around the rest of the island.

Pleased with this success, we then ended up a few streets back from the seafront where it is a bit run down.

Next we passed rows of abandoned salt pans. In the past, massive amounts of salt was needed as Lanzarote was a big fishing port, but fish are now frozen not salted, so they are just gradually decaying away.

Finally, continuing with the Manrique theme, we went to visit another fort that he restored, and came highly recommended.

It is undoubtedly a beautiful building with gorgeous planting around it.

The inside housed a modern art collection, including one from Manrique himself.

No I don't know what it is either.

The guidebook said to allow an hour, but Darren checked the time and we saw it all in eight minutes. We nipped round again in case there was something that we missed, but we couldn't find it.

On the way back to the ship we passed an attractive monument to sailors lost at sea.

It was a nice outing, but I think that we have seen most of Arrecife now.