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View of Palma from the Lockout Point Hello from the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. This is actually the largest of the 7 islands named the Balearic Islands and Palma is the capitol city of the island. The population of Mallorca is about 900,000 with almost half of them living in Palma. The number one industry of the island is tourists, with nearly 12 million visitors last year. Germans are the largest group of visitors, followed by British, Spanish, and then Americans (in that order). There are about 1300 hotels around town. 95% of the islanders speak a language of Mallorcan but also can speak Spanish. Anyway, you get the idea that we’ve come to a real great place for people to come and relax and enjoy the island.
But putting things in their proper order, we got up a little early and went up to the Horizon Court for breakfast. Then we were off to the Symphony Dining Room to await our tour. We boarded our bus around 9:00 and headed off to explore the island.
Our first stop was at the Castell de Bellver which is the highest point above Palma. The tour did not include a trip inside the castle,
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Part of wine cellar at winery but we did get a view from outside the walls. We also had a view looking down over the town and out across the Mediterranean. Unfortunately today was one of the few occasions when they had a rainy day (apparently it only happens about 20 times a year). It wasn’t raining a whole lot, but it drizzled off and on, and the temperature was only in the middle 60s. Sunny weather would have produced better pictures, but it was still a good view.
Then our bus took us for a half hour tour around town. There is High Palma and Low Palma. There used to be a canal flowing through the center of town but a flood one year killed lots of people. They redirected the canal around town and now the old canal has been turned into a walkway through the shopping district and is the centerpiece of Mallorca Blvd. Anyway, the city has really grown into a popular location drawing people from across Europe and the world.
The bus drove us about 30 minutes out of Palma to the town of Santa Maria del Camí (one of 53 towns on the island).
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Janet sampling some wine Along the way our guide explained that they have a lot of fruit trees (apple, plum, orange, etc, etc) growing in the plain nearer the coast. Up in the mountains there are an abundance of almond trees and they are one of the Mediterranean’s major producers of almonds. In Santa Maria, we went to the Macia Batle vineyard & winery. Our guide spoke English with a heavy accent and kept referring to it as a “vine jar”. Macià Batle has been making wines since 1856 using primarily local grapes. The tour started with an explanation of the vintner process, starting with the grapes, through the fermentation, aging, and bottling processes. They have a large number of 20,000 liter vats where they start the process, then move the wine into 800 oak barrels, and finally into their wince cellar where 150,000 bottles are finishing the aging process. They told us that oak barrels are only usable for about 5 years and then they have to be replaced. In the meantime, they age the wine about half the time in the barrels and half in the bottles. They produce 1.2 million bottles from this winery which is the second largest
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Street vendor floating in the air producers of the 4 million Mallorca bottles per year. We feel like we really learned a lot about wine making.
We toured through their facility and then had a sampling of 4 different wines (a white, a rose, a red, and a dessert). The hostess explained the differences in how the wines are prepared and how they should be tasted. They also gave us a selection of Mallorcan tasty foods. Then we had a short visit in their gift shop. Actually this might have been better as an afternoon excursion instead of in the morning. We finished the tour/tasting and were back on the bus on the bus at noon, so technically these have to be called “brunch wines”. Oh well, it has to be after 5:00 somewhere.
We rode the bus back into Palma. The original town was surrounded by a high wall which is still partially intact. They have reclaimed a lot of land from the sea outside the wall – it now has a 6 lane boulevard with many stores, restaurants, and hotels. One of the hotels has a bridge across to the middle of the road where it descends to
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Cathedral of Palma the hotel’s swimming pool (in the middle of the street). Originally the pool had been out in the sea and they just built the road around it when they reclaimed the land.
We were taken to the foot of their cathedral, which is an impressive structure - it took 350 years to build. Everyone had a chance to leave the tour and go through the cathedral, or do a little shopping in the gift shops, or go back to the ship. Since we have a major tour of a cathedral tomorrow, we chose not to get a ticket or go inside. We heard afterwards that it was really impressive. Instead we got off to take a few photos and buy a couple of post cards, and then we went back to the ship. There were numerous street vendor selling food, beverages, even handbags, and someone floating in air (had to think awhile before we figured out that one).
We got back to the ship about 1:30 and cleared through the ship’s processing quickly. We went up to the Trident Grill for a hot dog/hamburger to last us until dinner time, and a little dessert
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Palma coastline as seen from the ship afterwards. David stayed on the deck for a few minutes to take a couple more pictures from the ship, and then we both spent the afternoon resting in the cabin. We watch a short show about the guy who had done the marionette show and then Janet watched a movie (called Big Eyes).
At 5:00 the ship played their theme song and we cast off for a trip back across to mainland Spain and our destination in Barcelona. We went down to the Allegro Dining Room and had a last meal with Jim and Bonnie. Jerry and Joyce will be staying on after today, but we will be down to a foursome instead of our current group of 6. We both had shrimp cocktail as an appetizer and then a bowl of soup (Janet had beef bouillon and David had seafood chowder). For her entrée Janet has the Meatloaf Dinner and David had Turkey and Dressing with all the Trimmings. We both had Baked Alaska for dessert, along with a glass of liquor. Of course we had a glass of wine each for dinner – we are really going to have to cut back when we get home. By the way, we got a notice that dining time will be changed to 6:00 starting tomorrow, so we will need to reprogram out brain (and stomach).
We went down to look at the collection of photos they have been taking throughout the cruise. We got a couple pictures but discarded the rest. David went to see another show by the magician at 8:45 – it was even better than before. If it was too crowded (in the Vista Lounge) was going to magically return to the cabin, but it was alright. Meanwhile Janet stayed in the cabin and watched another movie called Woman in Gold. That pretty much wraps up our report of activities here in Mallorca.
3000 of our fellow passengers are leaving the cruise tomorrow, so we will start over with lots of people being lost on the ship soon. But then even now we still make a wrong turn every once in a while. Good night.
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