Vegan in Gran Canaria- Part 2

After a few days of wandering about Las Palmas, we became restless and yearned for adventure, so we decided to visit the Tourist Information Office to see what else there was to do. We picked up a leaflet for coach tours and were quickly put off by the fact that nearly every tour was 47 Euros!

That's when Gran Canaria's public bus service came to the rescue, we discovered that we could get a return to Mas Palomas which is the touristy area at the other end of the island for just over 12 Euros!

Apparently 'Palomas' means pigeons and 'Mas' means more, or many, therefore Mas Palomas translates to more/many pigeons. On finding this out, I was highly amused that therefore the singer Paloma Faith translates to Pigeon Faith in Spanish. Simple things!

Anyway, Mas Palomas is very much what you expect of a English resort, unlike Las Palmas which is much more Spanish. The area is know for it's massive sand dunes, which were impressive, and also very hard to climb up.  The view at the top was worth the effort but for some reason I don't have any impressive pictures of the view at the top, so here is a picture of me on the top of the sand dune.  The hat was purchased on the third day (from Primark of all places) after getting a sun burnt scalp- ouch!

After our hike up the sand dune and walk down the beach (I later found out if we had walked further down we would have found ourselves on a nudist beach!) we went in search of food and stumbled on a Japanese restaurant called Asia House in the retail park.  I ordered the avocado maki after checking that it didn't contain egg or mayonnaise and we shared some crispy seaweed.

The maki was super tasty and contained large chunks of creamy avocado, so much nicer than the usual stuff you get at Yo Sushi (ordered without the mayo of course!) and the seaweed was so different to the stuff we get from the Chinese at home.  The Boy's mum had ordered veggie rice, which I assumed would contain egg, I was kicking myself when it turned out to be egg free!

Back in Las Palmas, The Boy was on a mission to find another vegan friendly restaurant that I had found on Happy Cow called Rahimo16.  After a couple of failed attempts, we managed to track it down.  Although not exclusively veggie or vegan, this place is dedicated to sustainable food and caters for both vegetarians and vegans.

We went during the day when we could only order off the day menu which was 9.90 Euros. For starters there was the option of watercress soup or a lentil dish that came with yogurt.  After speaking to our waitress, I was lead to believe that only the soup was vegan and not being a huge fan of both watercress and soup, I decided to skip the starter and go straight to the main, which was cous cous served with stuffed mushrooms.

The dish was really nice, especially the stuffed mushrooms which I think was just stuffed with some super tasty hummus! However when everyone else's starters arrived I realised the lentil dish was just a lentil salad with a side of yogurt, and when everyone else started saying how nice it was I checked again with the waitress if the lentil salad would be vegan if they just left out the yogurt on the side. When she confirmed it would be, I ordered the starter as a main- and I swear that because I didn't have the yogurt they gave me extra lentils!  It was totally yummy, and I was completely stuffed by the end of it! The lentils dish was made better due to the fact that The Boy's olive hating vegetarian twin brother gave me all his olives from his stuffed mushroom main :-)

The day menu also included dessert, and we were lucky that they were celebrating their first birthday and were offering chocolate cake and glasses of cava in addition to their regular desserts. Unfortunately the chocolate cake wasn't vegan and the only vegan dessert was a fruit salad, however as Spanish cava is refined in the bottle and is therefore vegan I wasn't feeling too left out.

I usually hate fruit salads as a dessert (it's NOT a dessert), but having eating a filling starter and main course, I was quite glad of a light dessert and the fruit was so refreshing. I still jealous of everyone's chocolate cake though.

I was also surprised at the amount of vegan stuff in supermarkets too, especially given that I've heard so many people moan about how hard it is to be vegan in Spanish countries. More on that next time!