Most people choose to fly to Tenerife for their holidays, but for the 3000 passengers on one of the world's biggest cruise ships, Santa Cruz de Tenerife was a stopping point on their sea voyage that started in Barcelona during December 2009 and had already visited Casablanca before leaving the Mediterranean to head for the Canaries.

The MSC Splendida was only launched last year, making her maiden voyage during July from Barcelona. The ship has four swimming pools, a tennis court, a squash court and even a jogging track. It can accommodate almost 4000 passengers for which it needs over 1300 crew. The ship is a third of a kilometre long and can only visit certain harbours due to its size. After a brief stay in Tenerife the MSC Splendida left bound for Madeira, another Atlantic holiday island, before returning to the Mediterranean to visit Malaga and Rome.

Football is the other big talking point on Tenerife as the island's home team played its headline grabbing match against Barcelona on the 10th of January. Tickets were in big demand and some very high prices were being quoted for anyone still trying to get hold of one a few days before the match. CD Tenerife, which gained promotion to Spain's top division last year, has been finding the competition quite tough. The New Year did not bring good news for fans of the team which had already lost its first game of the year 2-0 to Racing Santander. Tenerife have lost most of their away games this season and were hoping for better luck when both Barcelona and Valencia came to the island during January. They will need to start making some wins soon as they sit fairly close to the relegation zone with the mid-point of the season approaching.

There are flights to Tenerife from the UK with flythomascook.com, departing from a selection of airports including Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow.