Then we headed back up to the Tiede volcano to take some more pictures of the awesome landscape, and we figured the Polo had a day off from mountaineering yesterday so must be ready for some more today.

Every corner revealed yet another stunning vista, and once above the cloud and the treeline, it really is like another world. Hardly surpising that bits of Star Wars were filmed here.

Tomorrow morning it’s an early start to head back the the airport, then back to Prestwick by late afternoon.

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Later we went to Santa Cruz to have a look at the shopping centres and, most importantly, to get some Chips Ahoy.

Tenerife is really an island of contrasts. The volcanic scenery is really amazing, and that’s just the bits we’ve seen from the road. Some of the hiking tours into the back country must be really great. Then there’s the seaside resorts – All the restaurants have the same food, and the shops all have the same junk, I don’t think I’d be happy to spend more than a day or so “in town”.

Tomorrow we’re going to head back to the south coast and have a look around there.

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First we had to negotiate the mountain road TF-82. With lots of standing water, and steep twisty corners it proved an enjoyable drive, though again our poor Polo 1.4 found the hills hard going.

The TF-82 was nothing compared to the road between Santiago del Tiede and Masca, the TF-436. A narrow road with harpin after hairpin after hairpin and what seemed to be 1 in 5 gradients. It was well worth it though as the views of the valley were stunning, and our photos don’t do it justice.

Amazingly, even on the out-of-the-way roads the surface quality is excellent, we’ve not encountered any potholes at all.

When we got to Los Gigantes we booked out on the “Flipper Uno”, a three hour trip out to look for dolphins and whales. The trip didn’t disappoint with Pilot Whales coming right up to the boat. We then headed back into a cove where there was an opportunity to go swimming from the boat – we didn’t, but load of people enjoyed jumping into the water by swinging off the trapeze.

We headed down to Las Americas for dinner, just to see how it compared with our resort. I think we made the right choice! Finally back to the hotel via the Autopista and we completed a circumnavigation of the main roads on the island.

As an interesing side note, when ordering vodka and coke at the bar, they wait for you to say stop when pouring the vodka, then top up with coke. I didn’t know that, so am now drinking virtually neat vodka through a straw.

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In the afternoon we ventured up onto the high mountain road to see the Tiede volcano. The climb up was incredible, with villages appearing to hang on the edge of steep hillsides. We climbed through the cloud to emerge into clear blue sky just below the treeline. A few hundred more metres and we entered an incredible landscape at 2300m. Our poor VW Polo rental and its 1.4 litre engine worked hard to get there – The trip back down worked the brakes hard too!

This evening we walked down into the town for dinner, down being the operative word as the whole island seems to be clinging to the side of the mountain with the only flat bit being the walkway by the water.

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We didn’t go up the Eiffel tower as the queues were ridiculously long, but had a pleasant time wandering around the tower and Trocadero. At Notre Dame we did a one hour walking tour of I’le de City.

In the evening we went back to La Defense and went to try and find a nice restaurant for Catherine’s birthday that was within walking distance – she insisted that heels were more appropriate than outdoor trainers. Unfortunately La Defense seems to be quite dead on Sundays, unlike the Thursday evening when we arrived. So we went back to the hotel, got changed and headed down to the Bateux Mouches for a trip along the Seine.

The trip on the Seine was excellent with really nice warm dusk lighting. We then headed back to the Champs Elysee, and found out to my surprise that it was still possible to order pizza in a kerbside restaurant at 23:30!

On Monday we went out to Le Printemps and Galleries Lafayette for Catherine to do some shopping before heading back to the hotel to check out.

All in all a great trip: a fantastic hotel, nice weather and we fitted a lot in to a very short time. I even got to see Concorde F-BVFF at CDG from the Dash-8 window! The only problem was the trip was too short.

Anyway, the hotel (Sofitel La Defense) is excellent. It’s clean, modern, spacious and the staff are really helpful. The bed is super-comfortable too. There’s even media centre hookups for the TV and USB charging outlets. However, with a rack rate of €550 per night, you would expect something good. Fortunately having booked the trip with LastMinute.com our total daily rate including flights was substantially less!

On Friday it was an early start (05:45 UK Time) to head out to Disneyland Paris. There were clear blue skies all morning, right through to 16:00 when we had some thunderstorms. Peak temperature was 39c which is incredibly hot! The park was relatively quiet, with the longest queue being around 55min. We also went to Disney Studios in the afternoon before returning to the main park at 19:00. Unfortunately the thunder meant that Big Thunder Mountain had to close (ironic really) whilst we were in the queue. However, we got to all the attractions we wanted to.

Friday evening we wandered around La Defense trying to get some nice images for HDR processing. To that end the GorillaPod is excellent, though one gets funny looks wandering around with it! My EOS450D, Battery Grip and 28-135IS USM Lens are probably a touch heavy for the version of GorillaPod I have, but the results look fine on the camera screen – my camera kit for the iPad didn’t turn up before we left so no photo uploads yet either

On Saturday morning we went to the Louvre. We had pre purchased tickets and a tour through Expedia, which was just as well as the queues were ridiculous. To be honest the Louvre is not really my sort of thing, I’m more a 20th Century history person rather than ancient arty stuff. However, Catherine enjoyed it, and it’s her birthday, so I didn’t complain!

The Louvre did however have an Apple Store, so I was able to get a cover for my iPad!

We then went to try and do some designer shopping for Catherine’s birthday, but being a Saturday afternoon the shops were packed and we both had sore feet after all the walking anyway, so it wasn’t much fun. We’ll try again first thing Monday.

We’re about to head out the the Champs Elysees to get some dinner, then down to Notre Dame for this evenings Ghost Tour.

We had some time at the actual lake and were able to go snowshoeing out on to it. Snow shoes really weren’t neccessary, but good fun nonetheless. Even with the snowshoes I still managed to sink 8 inches into the snow, and Catherine ended up on her backside – though it was probably my fault!

Our trip home is still looking a bit iffy, but now we’ve got upgraded seats and priority unloading, so there’s a small chance we’ll make the connection.

It’s been a great holiday – we’ve made some real progress skiing, had fantastic weather and good snow conditions. We’ve done far more black runs than either of us anticipated, and the non-ski days were good fun too. We even visited a ski centre we didn’t know about until we got here, and it turned out to be a hidden gem.

Sunshine Village is probably still our favourite, but in the right weather the other resorts are excellent too. We made great progress at Norquay, where three years ago some of the runs looked impossible.

The “Inns of Banff” turned out fine as well. We don’t normally do budget hotels, but the rooms are clean, warm and spacious. There is ski hire on site, and hassle free overnight ski servicing. Free wireless internet in room, great views of the mountains from the hot tub, free town bus pass, friendly staff and good food in the restaurant all make the difference. It’s first stop on the ski bus route too. OK, it’s not the Fairmont, but it’s still the same snow.

I’ll post some more pictures from the real camera when we’re back home.

The weather forecast was not great, but it turned out much better than forecast and we had excellent snow conditions on the upper mountain, though soaring temperatures lower down made it heavy going.

There was a ski race event on, featuring some of the Canadian olympic squad – unfortunately they had reserved all the blue runs on the upper mountain, leaving Catherine and I with no choice other than the much steeper black runs!

It was an excellent day, and we’re now quite confident on black runs where there are few bumps – the bumpy blues are still a challenge that Catherine doesn’t particulary enjoy so we’ve been sticking to the groomed runs, of which Nakiska has loads. All in all an excellent last ski day.

Tomorrow we’re going on a tour to Lake Louise including some snowshoeing.

The good news about the travel difficulties is the dog kennels are able to look after the dogs for the extra time should it be neccessary, though we’ve still not head from the rep at 22:00 local time.