Hotel Lobby above.

I’m not sure where to start with the review of our stay at The Abama Ritz Carlton hotel in Tenerife, there is a lot to say as there are so many positives!

I will stick to what stood out: the grounds, the room and the staff.

As you drive up to the hotel (easy and quick to get to from Tenerife Airport South), you can’t miss it, it’s big and it’s kind of pink :). I was so relived the flight was over that a chilled glass of champagne whilst checking in put me in holiday mood within 2 minutes. And then they upgraded us to a one bedroom suite http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Abama/Rooms/Suites/One-Bedroom-Suite.htm) , I’m not if it’s because it was my birthday but it meant the holiday started off on a high note.

The room was BIG and nicely furnished with everything you could need, the best thing was we could put A to sleep in the bedroom and use the lounge without worrying about waking her up. This really made things more relaxing.

They had customized the bed, which was a really nice touch (I kept the sign as it was so cute):

As a surprise, my husband (you’re the best Mister B even though I know you don’t read my blog!) had organised flowers, a card and champagne:

The hotel is big and we had to walk up a hill to get to the main hotel as our room was in the “Villa” part, which was great as we had a pool shared amongst only a few villas and access to the adults only breakfast at El Mirador, which I enjoyed! The view was amazing, the best I have ever had and the fact mini-B could not come along meant mummy had a lovely breakfast ALONE!

The freshly squeezed orange juice was delicious!

We also dinner there one night, this time the “Spanish baby” who went to bed at 9PM came with us and munched on some salad:

The view from El Mirador is exceptional and the food good too. There many restaurants in this hotel (over 10: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Abama/Dining/Default.htm) and this was the best we tried, we were on a half board package which included breakfast and 3 course dinner in some of the restaurants or 40 euros credit each towards dinner in the others (which we used in El Mirador so we only paid for drinks). We couldn’t use some of the restaurants as A is too young but they did provide a babysitting list from local companies if we wanted to do that. We also had a great burger from room service. Breakfast was pretty typical and I would say made up of 75% families in the main part, they have a quieter part with less children from what I understood but it can get loud, which is great when your baby is screaming, not so great if you are a hung-over conference participant…yep I saw a few whose headaches were probably made worse by the noise. We went to the bar for a drink one evening, drinks were definitely not cheap but it was a nice spot. This is the thing that we liked so much about this hotel, we felt welcome with A in the buggy everywhere. Many other parents were pushing their babies around in the evening trying to get them to sleep. On one of these sunset walks, we discovered the “secret pool and gardens”, so beautiful:

Here is A having a great time at dinner and not sleeping!

 

It was the first time we took A swimming and she loved it! I was a bit obsessed with keeping her out of the sun as you can by her attire below:

We also went to the beach and she wanted to grab the sea, she also started getting frustrated in the pool as she couldn’t get hold of the water!

You reach the beach via the funicular (hello Godfrey!) or by using the train or walking.

WE loved sitting on our terrace and also the walk down to the villa after dinner, the grounds are super well maintained and beautiful. You didn’t have to walk up and down the hill but we did as it was good for my post baby legs, if you didn’t want to walk they would send a buggy to pick you up and they came very quickly!

I quickly used the water facilities at the Spa and they were excellent, I’m sure the treatments are amazing. We didn’t use the kids club as it is for over 4 year olds nor did we use the Golf course nor the tennis courts. We did play ping pong once and the rackets were in awful condition, which was surprising given the standards of everything else..

We had a great relaxing time, it was the perfect first family hand would love to go back one day!

In the meantime, A’s new friend “Mister Ritz” is with us in London as a souvenir: