Another day on holiday has to start with another breakfast buffet. Todays wasn’t all that great unfortunately – it seems that the room is brilliant but the restaurant (and staff!) are pretty average. It was all tasty, but just a bit loveless and really nothing special. Also, no signs on the food to tell you what anything actually was… after eating our fill we headed back to the room to get ready and go. As we got to the room we noticed that the ghost cleaner had struck again and our towels had already been removed… Weird! Luckily we had both showered before breakfast. As I was packing up the last few things Manja was already waiting outside my room, as a German tourist stormed out of her own room yelling “Was für eine Unverschämtheit! Die haben uns die Handtücher geklaut! Ich gehe mich beschweren!” (“The Impertinence! They’ve stolen our towels! I’m going to go and complain!”)… so I guess we weren’t the only ones with that experience. Given that someone else was going to let them know that this was less-than-ideal, we figured we’d just check out quietly, lest we anger the spirit of the ghost cleaner.
Today Manja had found a nice area which had an old defensive fort built onto a peninsula.
The Cafe
Back in the day Mallorca needed to be defended from Pirates and the like after all. As it turns out the fort was a bit of a hike, but through pretty cool terrain with nice beachside views.
When we got there we visited the cafe for a cold drink before exploring the fort. It was pretty cool: a defensive ring had been cut out of the ground with a step on the outside, presumably this would have served to hold soldiers with rifles to fend off any oncoming attackers as a first line of defence.
Where’s the Kaboom?
The fort itself is only accessible via a thin drawbridge. Inside it was open, though there was a second floor with cut-out windows, again for shooters I presume.
Upstairs was accessible only via a very narrow and steep (thus defensible) staircase, which ended on the roof. The roof itself had space for several cannons, although only one was left as the exhibit. I’d wondered how the cannon was secured, because as it was currently it would have shot back into (if not through) the other wall. I eventually found some hoops built into the corners where the cannon would have been chained…
….. and yes, I find this stuff fascinating!
Inspecting the garrison
Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a museum, so not very much information about whether or not the fort was ever attacked or anything.
It wasn’t that long before we decided to head a bit further out, walking along the coastline. There /was/ a path… Though we did seem to regularly loose it and there really wasn’t a soul in sight. When it got toward the afternoon and we were both adequately sunburned, we decided to do the Aussie thing and bush-bash back to the main path, right through the wilderness and over a hill. Again, I was impressed to see Manja take the lead, navigating thorns and crevices without any problems. I was a little slower, given my lack of experience bush-bashing with shorts and thongs. Turns out I kept loosing the thongs as I manoeuvred around the obstacles! We did get there eventually, and I managed to get back to the car with a few scratches but both shoes.
Somewhat overheated, we headed to our next Airbnb. The place was brilliant. For tonight we had an old house which was once used to store wine (A bodega I’m told). Most importantly though, it also had a snooker table, a table-tennis table and a beautiful outside area with POOL!
Being a little over-heated and sunburned there was only one thing for it, so we splashed straight into the pool.
Sweet relief!!
Once we cooled off, we explored the area a bit and enjoyed the sea-side views, before deciding that we should use the kitchen and cook tonight.
The view from our Airbnb:
A supermarket was only about 10 minutes by car, so we toddled on over to buy what we needed for dinner. We settled on a pasta with heaps of fresh veggies, feta and some local salami. Manja also offered to show me how to make the Pimientos de Padrón which I’d fallen in love with over the past few days. Turns out they’re super simple: Shallow fry, add salt and enjoy! 
Given that it used to be a wine-cellar, the host added a bottle of local red wine. While both of us don’t love reds, it did suit the pasta, but we didn’t end up finishing it. Retrospectively I should have used a bit of it for the sauce! Also, it appears I drink wine now, it certainly was a staple at every dinner this week…
As we were eating, the pool cleaner came by and gave the pool a clean, informing us that he’d be back later in the week… I had a nice chat with him about the difficulty of keeping a pool clean when there are plants poolside which have leaves which discolour the water – much like gum leaves!
There was still a few hours of daylight and sun after dinner, so we got comfortable poolside and wrote a few postcards to our families and I wrote a blog post. I may have also written a postcard to Manjas mum about having kidnapped her daughter and taken her to Mallorca… She had no idea Manja was on a holiday, so it seemed funny at the time… It may have come back to bite me later, but that’s another post all-together 😀
When the daylight left and the mosquitoes began to arrive, we retreated to the table-tennis table. Two matches later we left it at a draw to prevent any fights (we might both be a bit competitive..), and called it a night.
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