Mallorca

Susie and I spent our final afternoon walking around the old town in Ibiza. It's set up on the hill, overlooking Ibiza and it set behind city walls. The views from atop are amazing.

We then caught the ferry to Mallorca. The ferry was MASSIVE and the journey took nearly 3 hours on the open Mediterranean Sea. We landed in Palma De Mallorca, the capital, and took a bus to Arenal.

Arenal is the resort beach town of Palma. We were expecting a bay and maybe a few resorts, and tourists...

Susie and I got off the bus into a tourist hell hole. Everything was neon and loud. Even Ibiza seemed tranquil in comparison. We were accosted by guys out front of bars trying to get us to go in for jugs of booze and table top dancing. It was awful. Susie and I looked at each other wondering what we had done. We had planned on coming to Mallorca for a few days after Ibiza to recover from our time in Ibiza. The party seemed to be going here too, but on a pub scale - full of drunk twenty something German tourist package holiday tours.

We found our Hotel with a minimum of fuss and settled in for the night. We wouldn't make any rash decisions until the morning....

Palma de Arenal is beautiful, but it has been ravaged by tourism on a scale that I haven't seen anywhere before. I thought the beach would have to be beautiful for all the tourism that surrounds it, and in the daylight, it is truly beautiful. But the sheer volume of people around, and the trashy tourist shops selling cheap souvenirs are hard to ignore. We were expecting secluded beaches and palm trees, not neon lights and Germans.

We went for breakfast in one cafe and I asked to see the Menu in Spanish. The waiter looked stupidly at me. So I asked in English. I was presented with a menu in German, full of German Frushstuck. It was too much. After one morning in Arenal, Susie and I decided that we would spend our remaining 2 days discovering other parts of the island.

We caught the bus into the old part of town in Mallorca and went to an old cider house for dinner. The food was very traditional and the wines amazing. I had suckling pig for dinner.



Afterwards we went for a walk to a bar that had been recommended by my friends Dani and Jose, and it had also been written up in the Lonely Planet Guide as a "Must See". It's Called Abaco. It's an old Palace, that has been converted into a cocktail bar. On the street, the entrance is nothing more but a massive set of wooden doors. Once inside your senses are assaulted by flowers. The entire inside has arrangements flowing from everywhere. Classical music plays softly in the background, and the waiters are in Black Tie. The artwork on the walls is amazing. We ordered a Margarita and sat back and took in the ambiance. This was definitely more us...



The next day Susie and I were determined to find a beautiful, secluded beach somewhere. So two bus rides and 4 hours later we found ourselves in the north of Mallorca in Porta De Pallenca. It was quiet, secluded and calm.



We then caught a boat to a secluded beach called Formentor. It was surrounded by mountains and accessible by sea. Lovely. We spent the day lazing in the sun.





That afternoon we made it back to Arenal just in time for a beer and to watch the sunset. It was spectacular!!



Our last day in Mallorca we decided to see the central inland island and the and a few Western Coastal towns. We caught a train to Soller up through the middle of Mallorca. Away from the coast the island is quite mountainous, it reminded me slightly of the Pyrenees.




Once in Soller we caught a tram down to the Port de Soller. It was a lovely enclosed cove, calm and full of boats with a small beach.



We then jumped back onto the bus and headed along the coast to Deia. Michael Douglas owns a villa here and it is considered the prettiest town in Mallorca. It was blazing hot, so Susie and I found a quiet place in the shade overlooking the town. It's quite amazing as the village has been cut into the rocky mountainside around it. This is also where Susie confessed that she dragged me to Mallorca as she saw Claudia Schiffer on a beach in Mallorca in Hello magazine!! Now the truth comes out. She was probably staying at La Residencia, a 480 Euro a night Hotel located in Deia. The Lonely Planet said it's the place to go to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. We could only look over at it from our perch on the hill.

It was back on the bus again, this time inland to Valledemossa. This town must have been having a festival, as all the streets were lined with streamers and there wre people out in droves. We spent the afternoon wandering the streets getting lost in the weaving back streets. We settled finally in a square with a bottle of wine and watched the world drift by.





Then it was back to Arenal to grab the packs and then out to the airport for our flight back to Barcelona. It was with a low cost carrier, Vueling. The flight was delayed nearly 2 hours, so we didn't take off until after 2am. I fell straight asleep, but Susie said that we flew through all this turbulence and the lights were flickering and everyone was panicked. Missed it all.