Canarias Mi Mundo

"Canarias My World."  That's name of the new series from TV Canarias coming up soon, either in December 2010 or January 2011, depicting the lives of foreigners resident in Canary Islands.

As a longtime resident of these islands, I was asked to participate, so I'm showing a little of what was filmed that day.

 I must have done something right that morning, because the cameraman was smiling!

 Room of antiques in upper floor of Casa de Los Balcones in La Orotava

CASA DE LOS BALCONES

I drove with Laura and Javier after a day of filming many of my usual haunts.  And the day ended with a visit to La Orotava and the Casa de Los Balcones where I had recently been to show my sister and a friend visiting from Canada. But although I have been many times to this lovely old Canary house I had never been to the top floor where antiques are stored in rooms furnished with artifacts of times long gone.

The Canary house located in the villa of La Orotava, is an architectural treasure of the 17th century.

Its style is typical of the houses of that era, with beautiful wooden balconies, floors and carved ceilings, all made from tea, the heart of the Canary pine, and still unretouched or refinished after 400 years.

The mannequins were posed in period costumes and at first glance appeared to be real.

Actually that one on the far sofa is real....that's Javier, the cameraman, changing his camera settings over for interior lighting.

Looking over La Orotava from one of the upper balcony windows.

As part of the filming I was asked to try my hand at this old hand cranked musical organ.

Looking down into the central patio from an upper balcony.

And looking over to the other rooms from the open balcony.

And a roll of antique priceless hand worked linen, called calados of which the Canary Islands are famous.

Women from all over the islands bring their handiwork of drawn threads here to Casa de Los Balcones to be sold.  The technique is an old art, which was taught here in the embroidery school years ago.

We found Mari, a lady who had been working here and doing this type of drawn needlework since she was fourteen years old. She demonstrated how it was done on a small sample board.

She recounted how the queen of Thailand had been there.  Mari found her to be a sympathetic and gracious lady who bought two of their most beautiful, expensive tablecloths.

And it was at this point that my day was over.  I was asked to wave to the camera and say my goodbyes as I watched Mari demonstrating the calado needlework.

And I also said goodbye to Laura and Javier after a long day,  while thinking how nice it was going to be to sit down and relax at home with nobody watching!

Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you'll come back again soon to visit.

¡Hasta la vista!