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Santa Cruz
The capital of Tenerife since 1723, Santa Cruz is home to around 30% of the island population, around 210,000 people. It is a typically busy, bustling, modern Spanish town, with wide avenues, narrow shopping streets and a series of suburban residential districts.
To be honest with you, it's a nice place for shopping, definately worth a visit if you want to do some serious shopping and avoid the tourist-traps of the south. Head for "Calle Castillo". It's also a nice place for getting off the island by boat but otherwise, not my cup of tea. It's very busy - especially with traffic and whilst there's the odd street or two that's a little appealing to the eye, most of them are pretty dull and dwarfed in building work. I love Tenerife and enjoyed all the towns I went to otherwise so it's not a general Tenerife thing, just Santa Cruz isn't my idea of a holiday. There are the odd attractions including monuments, sculptures, museums, art galleries and some nice parks and currenctly under construction down by the harbor is a very impressive auditorium, a bit of a scaled-down Sydney-Opera-kind-of-thing.
Whilst there's no beach in the city (town?) itself, a few kilometers away there is the mile-long, man-made, golden sands of Playa de Las Teresitas which is popular with holidaymakers and usually crowded with local residents at weekends and holidays.