May's sun trip diary
A.k.a. the curse of May
It had been in the agenda for months. And I had been looking forward to it even longer: the annual Coty trip with my professional friends. Coty is the company that includes sunscreen expert Lancaster. And the perfumes from Gucci, Chloé (Chloé Nomade by the way, have you smelled it?), Marc Jacobs, the products from Philosophy, Wella, the Tiffany perfume… What you say: the beauty heaven. And then there are also the most fun women Jenny and Daphne who you would want to spend a week with in Ibiza. Every year, Daphne and Jenny organize The Sun Trip. The idea? To catch up on all the grand plans of Coty and then, and this is really a Serious Matter, to see if all those products actually work as well as they claim. The adage is then to sunbathe, apply, sunbathe and apply, interspersed with a snack, here and there, and occasionally a glass of this or that.
Aruba is checked off, Thailand, Sint Maarten, and I was allowed to join from Cape Town. Last year we headed to Sani Beach Resort in Greece and this year we went to Tenerife. Main reason? Sun certainty. As I type this, an uncomfortable cough comes up. So I said: sun certainty. Last year in Sani Beach was lovely, really. But the fact that it was chilly, we can't really ignore that. We still laugh about the evening when we insisted on eating outside and were all wrapped in two blankets and each had our own (Al Gore should stop reading now) heat lamp at our disposal.
That, that never again. So Tenerife. A bit of a flight, but leave it to Daphne to find the most spectacular and comfortable hotel (my sheets are crisp white, my bath is in the middle of the room, I have a terrace as big as an average living room, six closets, four huge mirrors, a seating area, and a phenomenal view of the sea) and here there is sun. Again that cough.
I already saw that the weather app was much more enthusiastic about the weekend in Haarlem than about that in Tenerife. 27 degrees versus a modest 21. But well, in the Netherlands you always have to see that, right? And too warm, well, that's just too warm again. I downloaded a few fresh apps. Rain radar, Weather Pro. Their verdict: the same.
‘But,’ suggested an inventive colleague on the plane, ‘Tenerife is quite large and that app shows the weather in the north. We are in the south. It'll be fine.’ Oh, you can already feel the punchline coming. We step out of the plane and see a large, thick layer of clouds, and people wrapped in shawls.
When I greet Daphne and Jenny at the hotel (they were already there to arrange everything), they giggle about ‘the curse of May’ because since I joined, the weather has been getting worse.
But today, Rain Radar does not indicate any rain. That's already something. Sun little cloud, sun little cloud. Sun, help me out. Don't take this away from me. This is one of those treats I can live off for a year. And otherwise, you really have to send me on trips serially to get nice summers in the Netherlands. And I have to learn to love ‘cool’ and ‘cold’. There's no other option.
