Category: Europe Trip of 2018 (Page 4 of 6)

As with all things, eventually they come to an end.  The week in Mallorca was absolutely fantastic, as I’m sure you’ll agree from the pictures and stories.

Today we had breakfast at the Monastery, enjoying the view once more, before packing up.

After we packed we decided to take a look at the museum in the monastery.  Turns out the Monastery was in the place where Ramon Llull had his visions and breakthroughs.  The museum (and wikipedia, by the looks of it) go so far as to credit him with creating the work that influenced the thinking which gave us computers…  A bit of a stretch if you ask me, but a cool story none-the-less.
Besides a pretty cool video, which was repeated word-for-word in multi-lingual writing on the wall, the museum was unfortunately a complete disappointment.  Everything was numbered, but there was no reference to tell you what the item was! It made for an interesting half an hour though, and I was much more fascinated by the old farm tools and descriptions of jobs which were in a side-room from the main exhibition. As always, Manja took some great photos!

We strolled through the rest of the grounds, and found that the Monks apparently had a cactus farm.

Eventually it was time to depart, so I drove the treacherous road and all the way to a petrol station just before the rental place, accompanied by feet on the dashboard, just like most days..

When we got there we had to switch seats and Manja had to drive the last 500m to make sure the car rental place didn’t know I was driving the whole time.  Wouldn’t want them to worry 😉

I was reminded that I would have been a terrible passenger for this trip. I reverted straight back to my “Rubber-duck” sounds from the first night…. *sigh*

None the less, we go there just fine and the drop-off was problem free.  We jumped onto the shuttle bus, and were at the airport with plenty of spare time, browsing the duty free for a bit and having some airport food.

The flight back was nothing special, and this time left and arrived perfectly on time.  

By Mallorca! We loved you!

Back in Tegel, we caught a bus back to Manjas place ordered Sushi and spent the evening looking through pictures of the trip.

You may have noticed that these blogs are a bit behind – Sorry about that.  With all the adventures and so many cool pictures to sort it took a while to find the time to write and to curate the best images.   I’m catching up, and I hope you enjoyed going on the Mallorca trip with me.  Leave a comment if you’re reading!

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Today, started like may others on the trip so far.  Breakfast!

The cold buffet downstairs was quite nice, and we snagged the prime seat with a perfect view again.

After breakfast we traversed the treacherous road back to the plains, and headed to Es Pontàs (The big bridge) which is a free-standing water locked arch…  Which you can theoretically climb from underneath.  You can see why I was interested I’m sure 😉

Unfortunately there was no easy access to the water….  Which wasn’t going to stop us. We found a scramble path down to the waters edge.  For those who’ve been climbing with me, think Morialta scramble but with an ocean filled with rocks as an edge.

We managed to find a reasonable platform by the sea and I felt confident enough to jump in. Manja was (reasonably) a little more cautious and decided to remain on land. So, I took my GoPro to swim under the arch and see if there would be any point in me attempting the climb at some point.

I haven’t had the time or processing power to cut that video down, sorry. Suffice to say, the water was beautiful, the swim was really good and my rock climbing skills would have me falling off before I even really started that climb… It’s HARD.

And climbing back up

Don’t mind me, just checking out your Arch

Swimming Simon is swimming

View from the “platform” where I got in the water

On the way down..

When I returned to land we scrambled back up to the car, and decided to try and get to the beach we could see in the distance.  Some U-turns later, we got to a road which google said would take us to the beach, but in this case google lied.  We jumped out of the car and tried to find a way down but were only greeted by private property signs.  Eventually we gave up and drove around the other side of the cove, where we found signs to the beach and a carpark nearby.  We jumped in and then made use of the little cafe in the area to have an iced-coffee as we dried in the sun.  It wasn’t long before we had enough of beach and crowd, and decided to move on.

Manja had found another recommendation for a beach and we tried our luck with google once more, and failed again.  None the less we got to a coast, and the map suggested there’d be a beach a short walk away.  Well, short the walk was not, but we happily chatted and enjoyed the scenery.  And it was rewarding, we were at a bit of a hidden beach with comparatively few people.  We swam for a bit but the day got cloudy and cooled down a fair bit, so we didn’t spend too long in the water before beginning our walk hike back.  Both the slightly longer drive and walk were worth it for the solitude though.  I’d definitely come back here for a day next time….  If we could find it again.

Manja did a spot of research online and found us a little town with some good restaurants for dinner.  We headed over and explored the rocky foreshore a bit where we played with my the camera for a bit.

Eventually it was time to have food, so we decided on Tapas for our last dinner in Mallorca.  We chose well, the variety was excellent, and they even agreed to make a reduced seafood version for Manja 🙂

One slightly unusual thing was that there was plenty of stray cats begging for scraps.  Manja and I didn’t hand any out, but some tourists definitely did…  I guess that’s why they come and beg!  Instead we captured one on camera.

Having once more eaten way too much, we walked off our food-coma through the township and along the other side of the foreshore.  We really didn’t want to drive the hairpin road back to the Monastery in the dark, and I wanted another go at capturing the sunset, so we headed back again to enjoy the sunset from our balcony.  Tonight we really got front-row seats to a lovely sunset. The day had exhausted us both and we called it a night relatively early.

These are the two sunset clips from the monastery!

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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.

Palma at night

Champagne sunset

Champagne Sunset

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This morning I got to do one of my favourite things – cook breakfast.  Yesterday we already bought a few more things so I could make an awesome omelette.  We even had some chilies left, so a spicy breakfast omelette was a perfect start to the day.

After such a hearty and delicious breakfast, it didn’t take long for us to pack up and hit the road again, though we were a little sad to leave the pool behind.

We decided to take a detour to our next Airbnb via a fancy shopping strip where we also wanted to send off some postcards – which needed a few more stamps.  An ice-coffee at a nice cafe later we went to a shop, bought some stamps and asked for the local post office.  We were pointed in the right direction.  Upon getting to the post office we were told that “Those stamps are for another postal service”.

….Uh, what? Different postal service?

Yes! It turns out there’s several postal services on the island.  The stamps we had bought didn’t fill me with confidence so I decided to buy them again at the more offical looking post office, figuring spending an extra 3 euro was better than the cards not arriving. Sometimes you have to pay to learn things 😉

We took a stroll to the foreshore and looked at some of the super-expensive yachts moored in this area, just for fun.  While there was definitely many impressive boats, it’s amazing how ugly something super-expensive can be!  We also noticed this beauty, parked on the side of the road with no easy access to water.  My best guess is that it got stranded during the last flood 😉

Our stroll concluded at the car and we drove over to the next Airbnb.  Manja had found another spectacular place, a little bit inland and isolated: A farm.  The owner had recently freshly renovated some rooms, super modern and comfortable.  The only issue was, that while the toilet had a separate room, the sink and shower were visible from the bedroom.  Ah well, showers in shifts worked just fine for us, the terrace outside was beautiful anyway 🙂

As we arrived, though, I also found out that they had a TINY DOG. Which was super playful and bouncy.  *shudder*
In return for my protection from the big dog a few days earlier, Manja distracted the little beast away from me while I unpacked the car.

We explored the farm a little bit before heading to the Cassai Beach house which was a restaurant recommended by the host.  It was a pretty little place, and we managed to score a table with a seaside view.  Absolutely perfect. The menu looked nice enough, but pretty standard fare.  They did have virgin Mojitos, which made for a very tasty start to the meal.  I decided on a local pork dish (of which I forgot the name!), while Manja tried the Salmon.

When the food arrived we were both totally blown away.  Best food we’ve had so far, by a long shot. Given that the table was reserved in another half hour, we decided to go for a bit of a walk, and find some ice-cream for desert somewhere else.  

The area was beautiful, so we strolled along the seaside for about 30 minutes before heading back and finding an ice-creamery close by the beach… They had choc-mint, so that was pretty much as good as life gets.

I was pretty keen to try and capture the sunset on time-lapse tonight, so we headed back early, and settled down on the balcony.  I setup the GoPro and wrote another blog entry before we explored the farm a bit more.  We got stuck pretty quickly – a cat had just had kittens which caused Manja to squeal with delight, AND there was another kitten which was about 6 months old and super playful and cute…  Even I was inclined to squeal at that little fur ball.

Eventually we left the cats to pat the miniature horses and watch the chickens and ducks for a bit.

As sun set, we settled back onto the terrace, watched the sunset, took some photos and chatted over a glass of wine while the time-lapse ran.

Eventually we dropped into bed just after the sun had set. We were on a farm, so a sunrise-timed wakeup call from a rooster was to be expected – a reasonable tax for the serenity of the evening.

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