Palma de Mallorca, Spain

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Palma de Mallorca

The walk in from the ship proved to be quite a long way. Especially in the rain! When we first left the dock, John and I stumbled into the fort over looking the bay nearly 360 degree views of the island from the ramparts. The construction of these forts continues to amaze us, the pure thought that they were built by hand without the tools of the present day contractors, the sheer strength and time it would have taken to build. Cut from the stone of the area and how ingeniously they used of the landscape.
As we were walking into town without a map not knowing which way to go it started raining, so we ducked into a very modern shopping mall, and shopped for a jacket for me and went into their supermarket. The shops were all really nice, but it is very frustrating because the cuts are different and the euro is so much stronger than the dollar it seemed silly to purchase much. I did really need a jacket, the springtime weather was cooler than I had expected and the breeze on the ship is quite chilly.
We didn’t come to Spain to shop in the mall so we’re off to see the Cathedral I could see from the rampart in the fort. It was a miserable walk, cold and raining, our shoes giving our blisters, blisters and no map and no clue how far we would need to walk. We arrived in time for the sun to dry up the streets and found a bustling city, with windmills all around and beautiful tree lined streets along the waterfront. The Cathedral showed great examples of flying buttresses, and gothic architecture was beautifully magnificent from all sides. John had read about the roman baths so we wove through the alley ways looking for it. Before we could make a decision to pay to visit them we somehow insulted the ticket man and he followed us down the street fussing about tourist in Spanish. Moving quickly away from him we found ourselves overlooking a lake and walk along the walled palace. We followed this path along the water back to the street where we had walked in the rain. Hungry and tired we walked back to a little café along the dock where we had ducked in from the rain earlier, to have a bite of lunch. John and I sat at the counter and watched the cook prepare plate after plate, we finally decided the only thing that appealed to us was the hamburger and French fries. A meal we would never indulge in at home. He poured grease on the griddle, then on top of the burger. He poured the French fries directly from the deep fat fryer onto our plate. Somehow there wasn’t a speck of grease on our plate the french fries we crisp and fries tasting and a hamburger never tasted so good.
With the sun shining and our bellies full, the walk back to the ship didn’t seem long at all.

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Comments

[LoTraVelling]

Be glad it rained...
... if you try to do this walk in the sun, you would have gone through what I did at my first time in Mallorca, even worse with all the luggage at 40ºC. The "roman baths" are of in fact of arab origin, built and used between the 6th and 9th century - with very nice, flowery gardens which are a nice hideaway on sunny hot days ... Palma has quite more to show if you get a bit away from the center you will find better restaurants - the busses of Palma are recomendable, cheap and take you anywhere in town for one euro per trip. For the rest of the island it's better to hire a car. So did I at Hasso - Rent a Car, the first car rental which caught my eye, others seem to be OK as well, most common car hires are present at the airport and the tourist places. I got a good, small car and found a lot of nice places a bit off the mainstream. Such as the beach of Es Trenc or the villages of Orient and Fornalutx in the amazing mallorcan mountains, which made me come back many many times, til the present day ...