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Published: March 24th 2010
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Visiting Mallorca
Honeymoons are peculiar things. For one, I have noticed that they should be done immediately after the wedding. I always thought this was a bit mad, trying to go off on vacation (imagine how much preparation that takes normally, when one is NOT even getting married!) and then trying to enjoy yourself after all the stress of planning a major event. However, I am wrong. Honeymoons should most definitely be had after the wedding, this is when I felt most in love and happy, I spent the whole week at work really wanting to get home and see Dzl so I realized quite quickly why people go on honeymoons right away, and spend money, you just want to relax, be together and think about nothing else.
Cue Mallorca. Now our 'honeymoon' is actually planned in the form of a Mexican vacation sometime in 2011 but in the meantime we went to Hotel Fox care of my parents and had a great night eating sushi and being in a posh room and then we thought, ENOUGH with the damn snow, off to Mallorca! We booked a trip completely randomly and took off for a week, it was a
crazy deal, $1000 for two people for six days at a hotel on the beach including flight, breakfast and dinner. We should have known. First things first, the snow screwed us over. We got stuck at Copenhagen airport for 1.5 hours, defrosting. This made us run, full speed, (and wow, am I out of shape!) through the Madrid airport to reach our connecting flight to Mallorca only to be told the plane's doors were closed. We, and the other 7 passengers were furious. It all worked out however, as they put us up in a beautiful hotel fed us really well and gave us a fantastic bottle of a Spanish red wine. We made it to Mallorca for the next day at 11 in the morning, an entire day lost to travel. We go to get our car rental, and first, the name of the company in the airport was different than that of the online company I booked with. Now online, it said "at the airport you pay ONLY 69.00euros plus second driver" (second driver being 10 euros for the week) well we ended up paying 100 euros more. THey hadn't bothered to include full insurance (just scratch insurance)
and they only had bigger cars (with bigger fuel tanks) available. Moving on.
We got to the hotel and they told us we weren't in that hotel, we were in their partner hotel next door. Santa Ponsa Park Hotel by the way. The two are nearly identical, connected by a swimming pool. I read 28 reviews on one site and nearly 40 on other sites. It said, 'great, fantastic, right at beach, great food, etc, etc, etc'. To make a long descriptive story short, let's just say: very old german tourists (they are fantastic but they lead to...) all tourist information offered in German only, the buffet featuring bratwurst (soggy since we don't want to hurt our dentures), cabbage soup, red cabbage and apple, pickled vegetables and diabetic friendly desserts. The room was fine, though two small single beds shoved together with one sheet was not. The view from our balcony was the parking lot.
We made the most of it by using our overly expensive car to drive round the island. We went to the nearby grocery store and bought olive paste, chorizo, bread and wine for less than 10 euros and had picnics. It was incredible
to see the mountains and beaches. We had one hilarious moment when we were in an area that mimicked the Grand Canyon, mountains and valleys as far as the eye could see, the hue green rather than Arizona's orange, but the same kind of effect; we were standing in awe, and heard bells, big sounds of hundreds of bells ringing. This was accompanied by hundreds of sheep going baaaaaaah! All the sheep were equipped with bells around their neck and there must have been hundreds of them wandering in the mountains in front of us.
We also visited an incredible Spa, Arabella spa at the Saint Regis Mardavall resort. It is beautiful, there was a room with a salt water hot tub, floating in warmth with music underwater combined with 6 types of steam or ice or sauna rooms. It was beautifully designed and we enjoyed a massage and a beautiful lunch there. They had these amazing heated water beds on stone pillars in a garden, it was so fantastic. (Photos: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/stregis/property/photos/index.html?propertyID=1403#photo_section_4Link)
In Palma, the main city we found a fantastic little tapas bar where we got little pieces of bread with something on top, stuffed peppers, fish,
hummus, whatever, it was great. The idea is you go up to the bar, and take whatever you want so we had no idea how much it was and we took it easy. When we got the bill we found out they were only a euro each so the next night we went back and had a fiesta of tapas, it was awesome.
So the trip was nice but complicated. Great to see the sun though, a much needed relief after Copenhagen's endless snow!!! And the palm trees. We found little balls of palm tree hair all over the beach it was really horrible and fascinating all at the same time. :P
I think if we visit again we'll stay in one of the mountain villages, they are beautiful and endlessly 'authentic' - orange trees everywhere, little perfect cafes overlooking the mountains and quiet, no tourists (not that there was any in off season) we found one in particular that was truly beautiful. Next time, we spend a bit more money, and get the real deal. 😊
Enough for now! Adios!
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Heather
non-member comment
Hey Vanessa, I enjoyed your Majorcan post. It reminded me of my time there. My blog is looking for some good travel photos. If you have the time, email us some at dirtyhippiesblog@gmail.com or check us out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com Continued fun on your travels, Heather