Hola from The Canary Islands! So we’ve been here 2 days now, but I just can’t keep up with daily blogs and keep track of Momma at the same time. Its exhausting trying to avoid stairs and making sure that we have enough time to cross the street before the light turns red and my mother gets taken down by a runaway taxi.Our 3 star hotel is literally a block from the beach and my toes have yet to touch the sand! Today was to be our beach day, but we woke up to rain! The sunny skies of yesterday have disappeared! So after a late breakfast, we headed to the Casa Colon (Christopher Columbus museum) in the Old Town on the public bus (yeah for even more public transportation!). We got our moneys worth out of that bus ride, 1.40 euros, because at the advice of the old Spanish man on the bus we went alllll the way to the end to the Cathedral. And the little old ladies on the bus chimed in too to make sure we were getting off at the correct stop. The people here are so friendly and helpful. They are also amazed by my mad Spanish skillz! Mad skillz! And that was a looooong bus ride. It felt like we were on there for an hour (but it was probably more like 57 minutes). So our first destination was the cathedral. They started building it at the beginning of the 1500s, so that means its really old. We paid 1.50 euros to ride an elevator (not from the 1500s) up the tower for a scenic vista of the town on one side and the ocean on the other. It was a little cloudy, but the view was fantastic! We probably spent too much time up there taking selfies, but I wanted to make sure I got my moneys worth and enough selfies. Then after we paid 1.50 to go up the tower, we had to pay 3 euros each to get into the church and museum. That’s a pricey church! I thought it would be covered in gold and jewels from the New World, but I guess the conquistadors took all of that straight to mainland Spain and didn’t leave any in the Canaries. I didn’t see a speck of gold plate on the soaring gothic ceiling or walls–just the standard gold on parts of the altar.I don’t have to write about lunch because my mother is here with me so she knows exactly what I ate.So after lunch we went to the Casa de Colon (house of Christopher Columbus). He didn’t live here, but he stopped here on his first expedition to fuel up and get supplies because he knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to stop at any of the Portuguese islands. It was a fantastic little museum. Absolutely fantastic. The first rooms were built to look like the deck of the Nina and Columbus’s cabin. They even had an original journal written by Columbus. Maybe the neatest part to me was the replica globe from 1450. It had Europe and Africa, then across the wide expanse of the Atlantic was what they thought Asia looked like because the Americas hadn’t been “discovered” yet. Really, really neat. They also had some macaws in the center patio (macaws can live forever, so I wonder if these are some that Columbus brought back from his voyages?), and in the cellar they had a bunch of pre Colombian artifacts and they played traditional indigenous music with birds chirping to set the mood.Then we walked down the main pedestrian shopping street to get back to the bus station (which mind bogglingly they call a guagua here, just like in some Caribbean countries instead of autobus–this should be an interesting language factoid for about 4 of you out there).Standing there in front of a long line of taxis and staring across the street at the bus station we decided that we didn’t want to spend another 57 minutes on the bus. So we hopped in a taxi and were back at our hotel in less than 6 minutes for practically the same price as the bus! It was 5.20 euros where as we had paid 4.20 for the 3 of us to ride the bus. I think if we need to go somewhere too far to walk, we will definitely take a taxi! My time is valuable!And then when we got back to the hotel, we realized that we didn’t actually walk around the official old town. We just did a loop around the church and that was it. Oops!Ok, what else have we done? We got here yesterday, took a beach selfie from the boardwalk, ate a yummy tortilla española over looking the beach for lunch, walked along the boardwalk visiting souvenir shops, ate some gelato, came back to the hotel to use the wifi to plan the rest of our stay, fell asleep at 430, woke up at 8 to shower, ate a granola bar and fruit snacks, then went back to bed to sleep until 9:00 this morning. We were worn out from the plane ride to get here! Especially my mother who watched too many movies to sleep on the plane.But before that, we spent the day in Chicago. Our flight left Sunday at 6pm, so we could have flown to Chicago that morning and then sat at the airport for 8 hours waiting to check in for our flight. No thank you! This is why we did the smart thing and left for Chicago on Saturday so we could have time to do something. What did we do? First of all we hopped onto the L Orange Line from the airport to the city. That’s right! We took my mom on local transportation! Since it was only 37 degrees in Chicago (do you know, this may be the first time I didn’t have to rant about how I hate the metric system in this blog!) we decided it was best to find an indoor activity. Ergo our destination was the Art Institute. However, we had to eat first. And then we were right across the street from The Bean. And how do you go to Chicago and not go to The Bean? So we were pretty frozen by the time we made it to the museum. But this is what we learned, just under 3 hours is not nearly enough time to see all of the masterpieces contained in this museum. We missed so much and had to rush through the German Renaissance paintings which is a real pity. Actually 24 hours may not even be enough time to see and enjoy all of the artwork.Well, that’s the highlights so far.Love,thetwinsontourps. Don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Instagram! I can’t become an influencer without your help!pss. Wi-fi and 4g quality are limiting my ability to upload pictures to the blog. You will have to wait for more.