Finding Winter Sun with Jet2 *

*ad – gifted trip

It’s been over 5 years since Mike and I left the country together, so what better way to break that than with our first-ever all-inclusive winter sun holiday together! We are usually very much city break people, and we do tend to travel out of season as we’re not ones to sit in the sun and chill, but there’s always room for change so we took a look at the all inclusive holidays that Jet2 have to offer for this time of year!

With brand-new passports supporting our new surnames in tow, we hopped in the car as we’d booked flights from London Stanstead. We’re super lucky that it’s only 40ish minutes from us, and I’d pre-booked parking in the Short Stay Blue car park which was well-signed and posted.

Check-in

Once in the airport, finding the Jet2 check-in desks was super easy as their red branding is rather hard to miss. We usually travel with hand luggage only, so checking-in luggage with the self-service machine was a whole new experience. Luckily, one of the Jet2 staff was on hand and took us through the motions step-by-step and it was super simple. We labelled up our bags, popped them on the conveyor belt, and sent them on their way (secretly praying they’ll turn up in Tenerife the same time as us!).

Flight

Boarding was all on time, and we took off only a few minutes late, which felt rather rare! Our flight to Tenerife was a total of 4 hours and 40 minutes and as a nervous flyer, I felt we had a really easy flight with only the smallest amount of turbulence, which wasn’t even enough to distract me from playing Animal Crossing on my Switch! All of the Jet2 staff were lovely and made us feel really welcome on board.

Our return flight had the most dramatic sunset as we took off and left the island which made the take-off and getting to height a lot easier for me as I had something to focus on. Again, all of the Jet2 staff were really helpful and made our flight enjoyable. We also had a whole row to ourselves, so it was nice to space out and have some elbow room!

Baggage and Transfer

You’ll be very pleased to know that our baggage did make it to Tenerife at the same time we did, and we got through passport control a lot speedier than we had expected. Our transfer paperwork had all the information we needed to find our next lot of Jet2 helpers to push in the right direction. Once we’d found them, we had to pop back inside the terminal to wait for 5/10 minutes as our transfer bus wasn’t quite ready for us. We were kept well in the loop of what was going on and given easy directions to find our transfer.

We loaded onto the bus with ease, and within 20 minutes we were dropped off outside our hotel. We felt awfully smug being the first ones off too!

For our return transfer, we were given a half-hour slot for our bus to turn up, and it arrived within the first 10 minutes. There was really bad traffic on the way back to the airport after doing a few pick-ups along the way, but we were still on time to check our baggage in, get through security and passport control (despite there being hold-ups there that Jet2 had warned us about) and grab a sandwich for the flight.

Hotel – Melia Jardines del Tiede

We’d never stayed in a Melia hotel before, and we were really impressed with the Melia Jardines del Tiede when the doors slid open to reception. Within a few minutes, we had a glass of Pink Cava in hand and were being shown to our room by one of the porters; you can tell this was an adult only hotel instantly. Our room was a really great size with a huge bed, sofa, two-seater table, and a balcony with a sea view! Two of the highlights of the room were the fact that the mini-bar was included in our all-inclusive tariff (it was topped up daily too!) and that the bathroom has an abundance of Ritual products. Honestly, my hair has never felt so soft!

As it’d been a very long time since either of us had done an all-inclusive stay, we weren’t sure what the food was going to be like and how available it would be throughout the day, but we needn’t have worried at all! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were awesome; we had so much food to choose from, and there was always something that suited our mood or our cravings. With the availability, breakfast was served between 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., lunch was from 1 p.m. to 3pm and dinner had the high window of 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The lobby bar also had snacks available from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

We were really impressed with the sheer amount of drinks that were included in our all-inclusive tariff; as expected, there was house wine (which got my seal of approval), Cava, beer, and house spirits, but also a large selection of cocktails too. I have to say, Ramon can make a banging Aperol Spritz (yes, there is a right way to mix it!). We aren’t huge cocktail drinkers, but some of the people we chatted to thought what they had tried was delicious, and the staff didn’t hold back on the spirits! Karim kept our wine glasses topped up, which certainly won us over too!

The hotel had really great amenities too, and I don’t just mean the bar!! The swimming pool was absolutely huge and kept so clean. We aren’t big swimmers (I hate getting my hair and face wet), but the pool wasn’t a deep one, so we had a little swim and float about. We were pleasantly surprised at how warm the water was too!

The hotel also had a very nice spa area that we didn’t actually use as we were enjoying ourselves just lounging around in the sun. The gym also looked really good, and despite actually packing my gym kit and trainers, I never made it there as we were hitting our step count each day!

The location of the hotel was spot on for us! We were away from the party-party part of town, meaning that we were a little higher up, so we had stunning views! When we did want to venture out and explore the local area and beach, there was still plenty around us. The beach was around a 15-minute walk to get to, and we enjoyed a couple of strolls along there as well as perused the shops and artisan market. And yes, before you ask, we did buy plenty of wine to pop in our suitcase after checking our legal allowances (we didn’t get anywhere near them, mind you!).

The Melia Jardines del Tiede had a jam-packed entertainment schedule that included Spanish lessons for tourists, lots of fitness classes, a couple of dance classes, talks on the history of Tenerife, art lessons, and so much more during the day which we didn’t even get to as we were just happy chilling out!

The evening entertainment was all so good! We were pleasantly surprised by the level of talent that the hotel had secured despite it not being ‘high-season’! At 7:30 p.m. every night, there’s instrumental music to see in the sunset; we had Spanish guitar, violin, and saxophone, all of which we thoroughly enjoyed before dinner!

After dinner, from 9 p.m., there was a second round of entertainment, again, all of which we really enjoyed, but two really stole the show for us; the Soul Duo on Friday night that had us up dancing and Sunday night’s Latin singer who not only had an outstanding voice, but also had the moves too!

The concierge team really went above and beyond to help out with whatever we wanted. Matius helped us to hire a car (from a handy booth in the hotel) and gave us some great suggestions on where to go and visit (more on that in a separate post!). Toni and Patrick were also always on hand for a chat about the local area too.

Our only downside, which was partially a fault on our behalf having never stayed in an all-inclusive hotel after check-out, was being refused our last lunch as we hadn’t been told that it wasn’t included in our package, but after chatting with some other guests we’d befriended and reception, we got it all sorted. I get so awkward in those sorts of situations, but now I know for our next all-inclusive stay!

Would we do an all-inclusive winter sun holiday again?

Oh, 100% we would! We actually ended up really enjoying heading out to the Retama Lobby Bar for a drink in the sunshine and awaiting the first lot of evening entertainment as the sun began to set, then heading into dinner. We even enjoyed splashing about in the pool to cool down as the sun didn’t let us down hitting between 20 and 22 degrees each day! The staff really made our four nights, five days, overly fun and were all a credit to the Melia brand. All of the other guests we spoke to were all so lovely and helped to break up the day/evenings a little too!

So in other words, yes, we have been converted to fans of the all-inclusive winter sun holiday for sure! Especially the adult only holidays type, it was so blissful not to have any children in our hotel!!