Blog Charco del Palo

Wednesday and Friday evening you can visit a small market in Pueblo Marinero, in Costa Teguise. It is a very nice way to spend the night among the market stalls, shops and bars, because while you're doing a walk you can sit down right there and stay for dinner.

The Pueblo Marinero is the central square of Costa Teguise, created by César Manrique (†1992), architect and artist from Lanzarote. Well, at least a part of it was born of his hands. If you walk through the large gateway (a typical and also political relic of the time when it was built), turn around to the left to discover the part built by Manrique. It almost seems like a lesson by Manrique, how he once guessed Costa Teguise, creating this example.

The game with the small streets and squares is very well done by the arquitect. In fact, to me it seems much more an urbanistic work as just a nice design of a house. Because for my personal taste, Manrique here lost himself too much in attention to details with all these green painted woodwork along with the rest, done in a typical canarian building style. But walking around here gives you partially the feeling to be in a real, old, small fishing village (a pueblo marinero).

Unfortunately the continuation of the idea had little success, seen in the buildings to the right of the square, made without Manrique, and clearly visible that the calculation of cement and construction steel was more important than the architecture. Neither regarding the urban situation nor looking at the house designs, this part can't be compared with the part of Manrique, but of course it benefits from the model Manrique. However, viewed as a whole entire surrounding it is without any doubt one of the most beautiful tourist examples built.

And where to go to have dinner here? Well, I recommend the Ticino restaurant, which is located at a small square which is dominated by a giant ficus. But it's not the ficus why I prefer this place. Here the owner lady attends you personally, and the boss is the one who prepares the food in the kitchen by his own hands. The menu card is quiet small, pointing slightly towards a good restaurant. In fact, over the last 20 years I have eaten this menu several times up and down, and I find all delicious. Okay, it had to be salad with tomato and cheese and this delicious sauce, a Kalbsrahmschnitzel (steak of veal in a tasteful cream sauce), with Rösti (a specialty of Suitzerland, based on potatoes, but don't ask me to translate this please) and green beans with bacon. Don´t laugh, when a German has eaten so much fish like me, it creates him a great enthusiasm to eat Zürcher Geschnetzeltes (another Swiss specialty), fillet stroganof and other things you can have in the Ticino restaurant...

Photo gallery from Pueblo Marinero