Travel: My trip to Gran Canaria March 2015 - Part 2

Part 2 – Saturday

I hoped to have an early start but didn’t make it with one thing and another, plans had changed slightly and I had to have a think where I would go first. It seemed the best thing was to go into Las Palmas and find Marks & Spencer and El Corte Inglese, the two places I wanted to visit.There are two buses that travel down the road near to where I am staying, they are the 301 and 303 operated by Global Bus Service, and these are turquoise green coloured buses. The bus ticket from there into Las Palmas was only 1.40 euro and took about 20mins. The bus took me back down the hill towards Tafira. A few minutes after getting on the bus we came to an area where there were some shops (inc a small Spar), a few restaurants, a hotel which used to be a school called Hotel Escuela, there is also a garden centre there, a bank and Dino Petrol station. The bus continued to the roundabout then headed off towards Las Palmas.

I got off at the GUA GUA ESTACION (Global bus station) which is underground and followed the sign for INFORMATION. The lady in the office was very helpful. She told me that if I wanted to get a bus to IKEA and Alcampo, I could get one from the station by going to stage 9 and catching the no 15 bus (I think I will leave that till Monday and find Primark and H&M on Sunday). I then asked her how to get to El Corte Inglese and she pointed to the steps opposite and said go up the steps and stand at the bus stop and wait for a yellow bus no.17 to arrive. Once up the steps the no.17 bus stop was right in front of me. Across the road was a plaza and a queue of taxis.

I recalled passing another bus station with yellow buses, about 400m before the Global station. I think the yellow buses are operated by the municipality.

So, I caught the No.17 bus from outside Global (GUA GAU Estacion), paid another 1.40 euro and about 7-10mins later as we approached an island I saw the sign for El Corte Inglese pointing up the road on the left. The woman sat next to me said it was the next stop. We passed the store which was on the right then the bus stopped, I headed back down the road and came across Marks & Sparks which is next door to El Corte Inglese. M&S isn’t a big store but has a good choice of clothes, can’t remember if there was a food store. I then went into El Corte Inglese, I wasn’t impressed with all the 70% of or 20% off as that meant you had to go up to rails to look at what the prices were. It was better when I got to the 4^th or 5^th floor where most of the clothes were reduced. I managed to get a few things from there. There are actually two buildings called El Corte Inglese, they are opposite each other, the one I went in sold clothes and accessories the one across the road Electronics and Decorations.

As I hoped to watch a very important rugby match in the afternoon….the 6 Rugby 6 Nations game between Wales and Ireland I decided to head for the Irish Bar that I had seen while travelling on the bus earlier, but hey ho, they didn’t have a TV. The Spanish guy behind the bar sent me off in a taxi to look for another Irish bar which was supposedly along the beach front at Las Canteras ….well it wasn’t. The taxi cost me 7 euros. So, after having two small beers in and Icelandic bar (they must have thought it was the same country!) I decided to make my way back to the main town, but as I was walking down one road a few streets back from Las Canteras beach I noticed a large building called CINESA which had a sign saying C&A, Hyper Dino (Supermarket) and some other shops so I decided to go over to see what was there.

Although C&A was open and some other stores, there were quite a few shops empty, I did a bit of shopping took a photo of the cruise ships in dock from the CINESA building, had a McDonalds and decided to head back to my accommodation.