weekend in Mallorca

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It was a wild weekend! I am developing a very strong love/hate relationship with Spain.
Friday was very cold and VERY rainy. The day started out with Rachel calling the airline to ensure that our flights were all in order, because we had been having trouble all week with our flight info, and they informed us that we only had our ticket to Palma de Mallorca, and not a return flight. So we had to buy another ticket over the phone (from a WOMAN name Fred), and it was twice as expensive. It was a very long and discouraging process. And of course I had to be at school the entire day. Classes were ok, it was Halloween so we were just doing activities for that. I sang songs and colored with the 5 year olds and passed out candy to all my other classes. I got to play pin the tail on the witch with the 2nd graders which was very fun and entertaining. We sang songs and played with masks in my 6th grade class also. After school I went with our teacher Ana to meet Cecilia and Rachel to drive to Lucena. Ana was nice enough to drive us to the bus station on her way home to Cordoba. We got there and had to wait for a little while. I was still feeling pretty sick so it was no fun. But the girls were nice enough to pack me a lunch and some Halloween candy.
We got our bus to Malaga and from the bus station there we took a city bus to the airport. All of that went relatively smoothly. Rachel was smart and had already checked us in online and printed our boarding passes so we didn’t have to check luggage or wait in line at all (which for those of you that have been to airports in Spain, it is a long and annoying venture). We went to the AirEuropa desk to get our tickets because we just reserved our tickets by phone… well the man there tried to sell us the tickets for even MORE than promised on the phone.. And we had a huge argument after which he said that we could just call and pay by credit card and get them for a cheaper price. Which made no sense to me but that’s what we did. Soooo we went through security with no problems and decided to eat something before we got on our flight to Palma. We found a place to eat that wasn’t as ridiculously priced as everything else… and I grabbed a few ketchup packets for Cecilia and myself because we had potatoes and when we went to pay, I was charged 2 euros for my ketchup! HOW STUPID! Sooo by this time I was so frustrated with everything and upset I just wanted to go to bed.
Our flight to Palma was just fine and we took a taxi from the airport to our hostel which we found with no problem. It was in the center of Palma, right by the cathedral and by lots of cute shops and bars. The streets outside reminded me of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. The owner of our hostel was a very nice older british man who actually stayed 2 hours later to allow us to check in. He even gave us a special rate for the 3 nights and was very friendly. The weather was warmer and clearer than it has been in Priego so we put our stuff in our room and went out and saw the Cathedral which was beautiful at night. And it was right on the Mediterranean so that was fun to see! Since it was Halloween there were a LOT of people running around all dressed up. We even came across a big party outside by the cathedral with a live band. It was pretty exciting because when I was in Barcelona for Halloween there weren’t many people dressed up-- it was good to see people celebrating! After we walked around for a little bit we went back to the hostel to sleep.
We got up at about 9 on Saturday and went to a famous bakery known for “enciamadas” which are Mallorcan sweet pastries. We got some for breakfast and walked to the street to a huge flower market. It was very pretty and there were so many booths. From there we went to find another market, but it was apparently closed. There is a really big indoor food market so we went to see that and it was really neat, also very similar to the one in Barcelona. We got a lot of really good fruit there. We walked down along the Mediterranean and on the beach then back to the cathedral. We got lucky enough to visit during a mass. It was gorgeous inside and it smelled amazing. We caught only the end of the mass but it was really need to see. After that we walked around some more down by the water and saw a lot of beautiful boats in the port. We had some sangria at a bar right on the edge of the water. We then walked around through the small streets in the city and did some shopping. We had pizza at a yummy restaurant in the heart of the city. After that we went back to the hostel to rest for a while because we literally walked the entire day. We got ready and asked David for some recommendations for dinner places. We decided to do tapas. We started at the oldest bar in Palma, which happened to be right across from our hostel. The tapas were AMAZING and the beer was nice, cold, and very cheap. They made the tapas fresh and just kept bringing them out of the kitchen and set them on the counter. You just pick one of each thing you want, and when you’re finished they just count your toothpicks and charge you by that. After we had a few delicious tapas we went to an Irish pub and had a drink there and then went to another tapas bar where we had some awesome patatas bravas and fried cheese with a berry sauce on it. We ended the night at the first bar. It was a very fun night!
Sunday morning we woke up early again and ate some of the fruit we bought at the market for breakfast. We walked to the train station which wasn’t far at all and then took the old famous wooden train to the port city of Soller. The train was cute and a very touristy thing to do. It was fun though. The journey took about an hour or so and it went through the mountains and the beautiful country of Mallorca. The conductor even stopped in the middle to let everyone off to take pictures. When we got to Soller we walked from the heart of the city to the ocean which took us about 45 minutes and it was very windy and rainy. Let me tell you how much fun that was! But when we got there it was absolutely breath-taking. The water was so beautiful and there were 2 lighthouses on either side of the port. It stopped raining for a little bit and was a little sunny so we got to see it look really nice for a little while. We had hot chocolate and little meat pies for lunch at a café. We walked around the city and up to the top near the light house and the view was even more amazing up there. We spent a few hours there and then took the old wooden trolly back to the heart of Soller. We walked around for a while window shopping because everything was closed (Sunday of course) and then took the old train back to Palma. We walked around a little more and eventually had dinner and then we all fell asleep around 10pm! We had another exhausting day of walking.
Monday we got up early again and caught the city bus to the airport and waited for our flight back to Seville. Once we got to seville we had to take another city bus to the bus station there. We had lunch in the city because we had about 2 hours before our bus to Lucena. We just walked around for a bit, it was nice and sunny in Seville and then we got on our 3 hour bus ride to Lucena. It seemed like it took forever! But we finally got to Lucena and ran into Evan, the guy from Indianapolis. We all waited for a bus back to Priego. It seemed like we made a lot of pointless stops, but we finally arrived in Priego after about 12 hours of traveling. We went home and took nice hot showers and relaxed. All in all, it was a good weekend!

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Photos

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the cathedral at night

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at the beach

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the Mediterranean!

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the cathedral

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at the port

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sangria on the water

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old train to Soller

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stop for photos

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port of Soller

Comments

[marebear]

on the map
You lucky girl... I've added a pin on the map for you on Mallorca. Fun fun... love your photos.