Blogs from Balearic Islands, Spain, Europe - page 2

So, here I am on the Spanish island of Mallorca. The island is 98 km by 78 km, with 550 km of coastline. Typically, this is not my normal type of trip, since I prefer bigger cities, since the entire island holds a little less than a million people. Only Tenerife in the Canary Islands has a larger island population. I am staying in Palma, the capital of both Mallorca, and the autonomous region of the Balearic Islands. Autonomous since 1983, it has become one of the hottest party playgrounds in Europe, and the world. They say the Brits and the Krauts love it down here. The economy is based almost totally on tourism. And speaking of which, cyclists fit into the tourist category. Mallorca has a 24km cycle track, totally separate from the road. The ... read more

It seemed to take all day to get to Mallorca even though it’s a 1 ½ hr flight!! I don’t think it helped that the 13.05 flight didn’t take off until 14.40pm after a lot of gate changing! Managed quite easily to find the No 1 bus that takes you to Plaza Espanol in Palma, where we changed bus and caught the No 7 bus to Yolanda’s air bnb. Dinner at local restaurant before bed!! Sunday 27th October 2019 A full-on day sight-seeing in Palma – first of all we caught the No 7 bus back to the outskirts of the Old Town and whiled away a few hours just wandering the narrow old back streets, adorned with glass balconies, numerous squares and churches, Plaza Major, arab baths etc until we came out on the old ... read more

Reminder: the panoramic photos at the start of the blog change every 7/8 seconds and give a larger and clearer image than when viewed with the other photos. Also, there are more photos below the text if you want to skip the diary details; and if you double click on any of the photos you will get an enlarged, clearer image. You can return to the text anytime.. Friday 18th October: we headed for the old town of Pollenca a few miles inland from Port de Pollenca but had a bit of difficulty finding our way to find a car park through the maze of narrow one-way streets . Having done that we went to the local museum which had everything in it from stone age artefacts to modern art. We didn't try to go up ... read more

Today is our last day in Europe before a very long and gruelling day of travelling to Calgary in western Canada tomorrow. Issy is looking forward to this like a hole in the head, so she says we should spend today preparing for this ordeal by doing as little as possible. We sleep in, and then settle in for the day on a pair of sunlounges on Playa de Cala Barques beach in front of our hotel. It looks like a perfect beach day; the sun is out and the wind has finally abated. We can’t however fail to notice the yellow flag on the walkway at one end of the beach, which we assume is some sort of caution. We’ve noticed green and red flags here on other days, so we consult the Google machine ... read more

It was very crowded when we drove out to Cap de Formentor a couple of days ago, so much so that we couldn’t go to the main lookout because we couldn’t find anywhere to park. I have a theory that Spaniards don’t like mornings and that it might therefore be quieter there at 7am, so I set off to test it out. I ignore the obvious flaw in my theory which is that most of the people who are likely to be there won’t be Spanish, they’ll be German or British, and I don’t know anything about how they might feel about mornings. Despite this I think that my theory might be correct. There are lots of cyclists struggling up the steep road, but not too many cars or buses. The views over the sheer granite ... read more