Falling in love with tapas and sangria

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You can't really go wrong with £18 return flights to Spain, so when I was looking online for trips that Joel and I could do throughout the year, the Balearics were first on the list.

Touching down in Mallorca, the island looked deceptively small, so armed with my Lonely Planet I had great ideas about exploring it all. Turns out we really only scratched the surface on our five days there, but we made a good effort at seeing a lot of the capital. Next time I'd be keen to see the northern parts where there's supposed to be some great walks - although that'd require no drinking, so we'll see...

Palma has quite distinct districts. On our first two nights we stayed very central - in the old quarter, which was brilliant for high street window shopping, lovely restaurants and siteseeing. The second two were spent nearer the port and marina on the western side of the city, aptly closer to the clubs 😉

On arrival, we checked into our accommodation using my very pigeon Spanish, then made our way through town to the waterfront for our first taste of local fare. It's little wonder there were more cats than Africa with seafood this good. I was hooked. After wandering around for a few hours we grabbed a pizza and headed home where the crazy old hostel owner sold us 'several' bottles of his homemade sangria. Needless to say there were a few rolls of toilet paper thrown at the roof fan that night. The things you do for kicks when you're drunk....

Nursing nice little hangovers we attracted a few stares in the streets the next morning as we set about siteseeing in our summer clothes. The weather was extremely mild for winter (16-19 degrees) so going swimming wasn't far from thought. (When you live in London, you get a bit crazy near the sea!)

The tourism industry goes into hibernation mid-arvo in most Eurpean cities, so in between brunch at a cafe and siesta-time kicking in, we managed to check out the massive cathedral, an ancient Arabian baths and the palace of a famous Spanish artist.

Not wanting to divert too far from local culture, after circumnavigating the historical centre we headed back for a kip and then purchased more sangria from our mate at reception to kick-start the night. Later we found a classy winebar in the old quarter for dinner and when it was suitably late enough for Catilanians to venture out, got a taxi to the clubbing district. We stopped off at the famous Garito jazz cafe and then on to a couple of pumping clubs, which were the precussor for our next few nights!

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Photos

La Seu Catedral in central Palma
Founded in 1229 but only completed in 1601