Another awkward beach and a really good feed

As predicted, the day started with a call of a rooster. To be fair, the windows were double glazed, so I did manage to go back to sleep for a bit. A basic breakfast was included, in the sense of pod-coffee and pre-packed muffins… Which we tried but definitely didn’t like. But today we’d pre-planned for a buffet lunch, so it didn’t matter much!

As we’d not gone to a beach at all yesterday, we were having withdrawals and headed to a beach which was recommended by one of Manjas friends and recommended /against/ by another. We figured that was a place to check out, and it wasn’t far from our lunch plan.

The tray matches my bathers…

At the start of the road we stumbled onto a local salt refinery which had plenty of local produce, so we stopped by, had a coffee and picked up some small souvenirs for Manjas friends who were looking after her cat.

Soo much salt!

The only catch with this beach was that it was down a nasty street which was only wide enough to be two-way by centimetres. After traversing that, we got to a carpark where we had to pay 7 Euro to park, or turn around and try our luck on the road the other way. We decided to cough up, especially seeing that the money went directly to maintaining the area… Or at least thats what the sign said.

When we got to the beach, we found a pristine long beach, with massive crowds on the right and not so many people on the left. Obviously we headed to the left without a second though, figuring the bar was probably to the right. After a quick dip we walked down the beach a bit further, and quickly understood why it was less crowded. As seems to be the pattern for us, we stumbled into another FKK location. None the less the beach was nice, though not many photos this time 😆

We were both hungry by now, so we went back to the car and drove the 20 minutes to the all-you-can-eat Mallorcan buffet. Another recommendation from the host at the farm! I jumped out of the car, only to find Manja hesitating due to a lack of shoes. We searched the car, and realised that she must have left them at the carpark. Ah well, we’re on holidays, and it’s only 20 minutes. We headed back, and I pleaded with the carpark gatekeeper to let me look for the shoes. He didn’t let us back into the carpark (even though we had a ticket from a few hours earlier) but he did allow us to park on the side of the road for 5 minutes and race in to find her thongs. I was pretty impressed with my memory of where we’d parked (the carpark has no lines, it’s just sand and cars) and we beelined to the shoes and found them. Lucky!

Another traversal of the one-way road and 20 minutes later we were at the buffet, seriously hungry but happy we had regained Manjas shoes. The Buffet was excellent, and cheap. It had loads of decent quality food, most of which was what the locals would eat. I tried a large variety of meats and seafood, including paella etc. etc. etc. There was even a dessert bar, and while we sampled a lot none of it was particularly to our tastes, except some exceptional local ice-cream. None the less we left feeling like we’d eaten waaaaaay tooooo muuuuch. Totally worth it though!

And then it was off to our last accommodation for this holiday where we’d spend two nights – Santuari De Cura – a monastery on top of a mountain which had been partially turned into a hotel. We splurged a little on this one because we weren’t completely sure about the previous accommodations and wanted to make sure we finish on a high, so we had a suite to ourselves. It was TOTALLY WORTH IT. We had a corner room with balcony overlooking Palma, with a perfect view of the sunset. The drive was a little tough, more narrow roads with tight turns, so we decided to just spend the evening at the monastery.

Panoramic view from the

We explored a little before relaxing on the balcony and eventually enjoying a seat at the restaurant directly below us. We had a perfect view with a really nice dinner, and then enjoyed the complimentary champagne while watching the sunset.

It wasn’t as brilliant as some of the previous ones because we’d had a few clouds and a bit of drizzle overnight, but it was still awfully pretty… And we played with the champagne for photos anyway 🙂

As the sunlight left us, we headed off to bed.