Intro and Escape to Mallorca

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WELCOME TO MY WEBLOG. This is a first in a continuing series of posts of my travels throughout Europe. Often accomodating me will be my lovely and talented wife, Bethany and, on certain occassions, Finnegan, our 9-month old Collie.

We currently live and work in Giessen, Germany, about 45 minutes north of Frankfurt.

Bethany and I just returned from a weekend Mallorca (sometimes Majorca)--an escape from otherwise dreary Giessen. The weather was beautiful--probably 60 degrees with lots of sun and few clouds.

We were in Mallorca from early Saturday morning until late Sunday night.

We flew out on an "o-dark-thirty" flight from Cologne on HLX--an airline now high on my list of the low-cost variety--and landed at about 0830.

We walked past the rental car stands. This is a big mistake if you are visiting Mallorca in January or February, the off-off-season. Cars were as cheap as 18 euro per day there, compared with what we paid for when we had to give up our quest for mopeds (seemingly unavailable in the off-season) and rented a car out in Porta Alcudia.

Instead, we took the bus to Plaza d'Espana--Palma's central transport hub--where we boarded another bus for Porta Alcudia.

The bus ran from Palma to Port Alcudia for 8 euro per person, round trip. the sunny day made the trip enjoyable and it was nice to be in a place that has some nice mountains and somewhat-bucolic scenery. Additionally, the area is dotted with windmills, including the traditional "Dutch-style" mixed with what looked like a spindly flower.

In addition to windmills, the interrior is mostly flat farmland with those moderately-sized mountains (300-1200 m) to the north and a few of the same sized mountains way off to the south and southeast.

The farms seem to be mostly olive and citrus, along with sheep. A few of the farms had what appeared to be albino ostriches, and there was a bevy of egret-like birds that were occupying fields close to the albinostirches.

Yes, albinostriches. Struthio camelus albinios.

We got off the bus a stop early, in Alcudia, where we wandered for a bit through a mostly pedestrian old city behind medieval walls. The old city was clean and pleasant to walk around and reminded me of our trip to Barga, Italy last November (I'll post a blog on that trip later), as well as parts of Sevilla.

Despite my intuition that there might be rental mopeds or cars available, we couldn't find any, so we decided to stop for a drink in a cafe near to the western city wall on the main east-west thoroughfare through the old town. The owner was British and pointed us toward Porta Alcudia for rental mopeds to a place called Wheelies on Carreterra D'arta.

En route, we stopped off at the Teatro Romana, an old roman theater dating back to, well, it was long ago. It was a pleasnt stop, set off the main road in the middle of some small farms.

Wheelies (aka Wheels Sports) is not actually open all-year round, so we stopped looking for mopeds and went for a rental car. the one we found was $25 a day, and had to be returned to the dealer in Porta Alcudia, unless we wanted to pay $25 and return it to the airport where the company maintained another office. Thinking that we had already paid for our return bus trip, we decided to return the rental car to the dealer in Porta Alcudia.

We found lunch at a harborside restaurant near Moll Dels Pescadores called Bodega d'es Port. Bethany and I both ordered the set menu, which, for 9 euro, got you a bowl of soup or a salad, a choice of main course between salmon and peppersteak, dessert and a half caraffe of wine or water. The soup was fairly good, but the pepper steak was a bit disappointing. The house wine was nice, however, and probably made the lunch worth its value. I didn't have the dessert, since I gave up desserts for Lent, but Bethany did and she said it was wonderful. It was a lightly fried flan (don't ask me how they did it) and some ginger ice cream.

After lunch, we headed off to Coves de Campanet, a small cave located about 10 KM west of Alcudia. It is set in an idyllic little valley at the foot of the Serra de Tramuntana. There was a costly entrance fee--9 euro per person--but the tour was worth it. The guide spoke 5 different langauges--Mallorcan (which is just a dialect of Catalan, but still), Spanish, French, German and English. The cave had some wonderful little stalactites that were given the nickname "spaghetti" and did very much resemble the dry pasta noodles. Their "pride and joy" was a spaghetti stalactite that was four meters long. Additionally, they had some well built walkways going throughout the caverns that allowed guests to extensively explore what there was (nothing near the size of Carlsbad caverns, but still pretty roomy for a family of four).

Afterward, we wound our way up into the Serra de Tramuntana to the Monastery in Lluc. This monastery was very much a tourist destitination, as it included a couple of restaurants and a campground (and we think it had a hotel, but we weren't sure). Its setting high in the mountains offered some spectacular views, so it was easy to understand why. The chapel in the monastery was very pretty--althought very similar to many of the other chapels, churches and cathedrals throughout europe, this chapel did standout in its decor. To the immediate east of the monastery buildings, there is a stairway that climbed upward for what was probably a 100m change in altitude where there was a large stone cross that looked down not only on the monastery, but also on a large hollow (a lowland area found in the saddle between two mountains) where there was another farm with many more sheep and olive trees.

And this is where I'll stop for today, as it is midnight. More tomorrow, including pictures.
-B

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