On the eve 5^th January, children dress in their finest clothes and line the streets with their families to welcome the 3 Kings who ride through the streets on their camels following a procession of dancers and entertainers.  You might have to duck a few times to avoid the handfuls of sweets that are thrown into the crowds!

At the end of the parade, the children wait to pass their letters to the 3 kings, just as a child would pass a letter to Father Christmas in the UK.  Their little faces lighting up hoping that the 3 kings will leave their presents that night.

When the children get home, they leave shoes outside of their house filled with carrots and hay for the camels.  The next morning they are all excited to see the gifts that the 3 Kings have left for them!

Did the 3 Kings visit your house last night?

Another part of the evening is the purchase of a 3 Kings Cake – Rosca de Reyes this is a ring-shaped pastry (tasting similar to hot-cross-bun mixture), covered in sugar and fruit flavoured jellies.

Beware when you bite into it though as often hidden inside is 1 bean and 1 small figure of baby Jesus.  The person that gets the bean has to pay for the following year’s cake.  The person who gets baby Jesus has good luck for the coming year!

I believe there are a few variations of what you can find in one of these delicious cakes.  What did you find in yours?

It’s been a few years now since we have seen Alec and Jane, our neighbours from Leeds and we are looking forward to catching up face to face with them again.  We do of course keep in touch regularly by e-mail, Facebook, Skype and those kind of things, but its not really the same, is it?

We first met in 1996 when they moved in next door to us and until we left the UK in 2003 we had some fantastic times, the parties we had were unbelievable, heck we even designed the garden fence to that one panel could be removed easily to cater for the number of people!  BBQs in the rain with the umbrella over it to stop the fires being extinguished, 70′s fancy dress parties, any excuse and that BBQ was lit!

Well, as I say they are on their way to spend a fantastic couple of weeks in Tenerife.  We haven’t planned exactly what we will do while they are here yet, there is so much that we could do and of course I am mindful of the fact that we still need to work for some of the time they are here!  As mentioned only a few days ago on another great site it is so easy to introduce people to the delights of the Real Tenerife that you can forget we have to earn a living as well!.

I think that on New Year’s Eve we will stay local to home in Los Cristianos, there are a some great bars and restaurants to start the night off before we head down to the beach to see the New Year in watching the fantastic firework displays.  After that we are sure to head up to the Church Square for the massive street party where the music and dancing will continue to the early hours.

To round it off, probably somewhere around 06:30hrs ‘family tradition’ suggests that Curry and Chips will be on the menu back at home!

The next few days will probably be needed to recharge those batteries before we have to start again to celebrate our Silver Wedding anniversary on the 4th, although as this falls on a Monday we may need to start the day before!  Monday night will see us heading for St Eugens bar to have a great laugh with Mike Carlton, then Simply Mo and of course the brilliant Billy Idol show!

Next comes Los Reyes, or Three Kings Day and we will just have to take them to see the procession from the Port up to the Cultural Centre.  That is a great experience, but more about that in another post.

The 8th sees Elinor’s 14th birthday and that will need some kind of celebration too.

In amongst all of these parties we will have to show off some of our great island, maybe a trip to Puerto de La Cruz, possibly up to the Lizard Garden on Teide, a bracing walk along the rocks at Garachico, not forgetting Los Gigantes and Playa san Juan.

How will we fit it all in?  Where or what do you think we should make sure we fit in to our busy schedule next week?  Let us know, we may have missed the obvious!