Benvinguts a Menorca!

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The departure from Barcelona was relatively painless despite having to tiptoe in the dark amidst our tedious Francophone roommates in the morning. We had to sit on our plane for quite a bit since clearly no airport can figure out how to organize its departures but once in the air the flight lasted an hour if even that. Before landing the views were pretty breathtaking, and it was strange to see how undeveloped the island really is. Later we would read that Franco punished the island for being the last place in Spain to fall to him and disallowed any development for tourism like in neighboring Mallorca and Ibiza. On the ground in Maó, the capital, we unfortunately had to wait some 3 hours for the next bus to Ciutadella, the island’s second largest city and the area in which we were staying. That meant Alex and I lay in the sun and ate ice cream until finally our stupid bus came, but better paying 4€ for the bus than a 60-some € taxi fare. Arriving in Ciutadella we of course missed the bus to the “resort area” in which we were staying by about 30 seconds and so had to take a taxi to our hotel “Los Lentiscos” in Urbanització Els Delfins. **Sigh** I could think of better ways to have spent those past 6 hours but we were finally at our place and happy to settle in.
Our lodging was LEGIT, especially considering we were each paying about 12€ per night. We have a bedroom with two beds, a kitchenette with large table and living space, nice bathroom, and spacious porch/terrace with views of the ocean. Molt bé if I do say so myself. After unpacking we hit up the local “supermarket” to pick up some essentials to keep at home, namely sobressada (Menorcan minced pork sausage with paprika) and maó cheese (a local pressed cheese made from cow’s milk). We enjoyed both items with a bit of bread before heading out to explore our surroundings.
The immediate coastline is absolutely gorgeous, with porous lava-looking stone and rough, Mediterranean vegitation crawling all about. Among the prettiest is this creeping purple flower that also manages to attract tons of bees and frightens me as I walk past thanks to the ominous buzzing sounds. Meanwhle the weather is perfect. As we return home to enjoy some celebratory rum & cokes on our porch watching the sunset over the ocean we raise our glasses to Hilary (Clinton) for giving us this wonderful opportunity ☺
Eventually we departed the hotel and headed down the main strip of our resort area. It was then that we realized the true horror of our immediate surroundings and why it was as such - THE BRITISH. The street is essentially a mix of the Jersey Shore, Wisconsin Dells, and Niagara Falls with absolutely bone-chilling establishments catering to English and Irish folk. “Full English breakfast with REAL English bread!” “Robbie Williams Tribute TONIGHT!” “Reserve Your Traditional Sunday Roast Here!” The Irish dancing spectacle then really took things to the next level. Like really? We are in MENORCA, a culturally CATALAN island off of SPAIN. Why must you recreate your culture here. I’m going to go ahead and just stop addressing this issue for everyone’s sake.
Picking a place for dinner was a difficult endeavor thanks to the aforementioned issue, but eventually we settled for Sa Caldereta, with literally means “The Lobster Stew”. One interesting thing about the Menorquí dialect of Catalan is the use of “Es” and “Sa” instead of “El” and “La” for the masculine/feminine definite articles, but I don’t recall why this happened with respect to Latin. Anyway, as would become typical for everytime we went into a restaurant, the staff suffered a heart attack when we came at them in fluent Catalan, but then quickly adjusted and treated us like the Andorran Princesa and Príncep we are.
We were brought a dish of nice little olives as well as bread with aioli to get our appetites going while we decided on our meals. Another interesting tidbit, mayonnaise is believed to have originated on this island during French occupation (“mahonesa” comes from name of the capital, in Spanish “Mahon”), but was then robbed and claimed by the French as their own. For our main dishes we chose…Lechona (cochinillo under a different name) since we hadn’t had suckling pig in over 24 hours, and then stuffed squid. Both were phenomenal - Alex received what seemed like half a pig for the mere 17€, the meat being super tender and the skin like the best thick potato chip you’ve ever eaten. My squid was as equally delicious as anything could be when put up against pork - the two big squids were stuffed with a nice fish and bread-crumb melange and sitting in a creamy, buttery sauce that was reminiscent of lobster bisque. The owner then came and talked to us for a bit, we told him we were from Andorra, blah blah blah, until finally we returned to the hotel where we both promptly passed out.

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Comments

[Mom]

Everything looks incredible! What a wonderful life you have in case you don't realize it!

[Dad]

Ditto what Mom wrote
I don't get the English/Irish tourist thing either. We'll have to add Menorca to the places to visit list.