The North of Tenerife
The town boasts many good quality hotels and plenty of bars and nightlife, but relatively little in the way of decent beaches. To alleviate this situation the internationally renowned Canarian artist CУ©sar Manrique, who hails from Lanzarote, was commissioned to design a large open-air seawater swimming pool in the town. The result is called the Lago de Martianez and is a very impressive public pool only a matter of yards from the sea itself, where there is plenty of room both to swim and sunbathe.These days, Puerto, as it is commonly called, and the north of Tenerife in general, seem to be more popular with German holidaymakers than British, who favour the warmer south of the island.
Okay, it"s not really a resort but, being the island"s main town, it obviously has it"s fair share of hotels so can therefore be considered a resort in that sense. The capital of Tenerife since 1723, Santa Cruz boasts around 30% of the island population. It is a typically busy, bustling, modern Spanish town, with wide avenues, narrow shopping street and a series of suburban residential districts.
Yet it retains its individuality and distinctiveness from other large Spanish towns when you consider the year round mild climate and not forgetting that from most parts, even in the city centre, you can see the jagged peaks of the Anaga mountains cutting high into the skyline, to remind you are on a remote volcanic island. The town"s most important commodity is its large port, one of the biggest in Spain and one of the busiest in the world. Tenerife has always been hugely important as a shipping thoroughfare due it"s location at the gateway between America, Africa and Europe. Santa Cruz holds many attractions for the tourist, such as monuments, sculptures, museums, art galleries and a selection of attractive parks in which to have a rest from all the sightseeing!
Football fans will find here the stadium where the island"s team, C.D.Tenerife, holds its home matches - in 1999 the club was demoted from the premier division of the Spanish national football league. Although the port takes up practically the whole of the town"s coastline, local residents don"t lose out as a few kilometres up the road is perhaps the island"s best beach, the mile-long, man-made, golden sands of Playa de Las Teresitas, which is popular with holidaymakers and usually crowded with local residents from the capital at weekends and holidays.