Having just arrived home from a magical experience in Majorca (as the English would say), this is definately a place worth exploring. I have visited many Spanish islands before but have always kept at arms length from Mallorca as it has always been assoiciated with the 'larger louts' and beach bums, but how nieve I have been.
Arriving in only 1.5 hours direct for Basel airport the journey was easy and hassle free for me, but not so easy for Bi, as she had to fly from Porto first to Madrid, then change flights and fly on to Palma. The timing was perfect as we arrived within 10 minutes of each other and made our way to the car rental for our pre-booked car for the next 10 days. Not actually the car I planned to have, as I quite fancied the advertised Citroen C2, but ended up with a Ford Ka, which turned out to be ok and great for the small roads and mountains we were to endure and with my pre-loaded maps on my GPS we were all set to explore.
Leaving the airport behind us it only took 15 minutes to get into the centre of Palma our first destination for a couple of days. Our hotel was the Santa Ana, situated on the west side of the the city and right on the beach. Having eventually found a suitable parking place, as there is nothing at the hotel, we made our way to the reception in the 35° midday heat, sweating and looking forward to running into the warm sea to cool down. Cautionary note; when you book a hotel on the internet read the reviews and double check the rooms as they may not be a true representation of the actual hotel. In our case, we looked at various hotels and this seemed to be very nice, and if you get a sea front balcony room it could be very nice, although for us we got one of ten or so back rooms, on the opposite side of the building, with a view of the main road and the very noisy clubs and bars. We did not realize this until we returned to the room and tried to get off to sleep and found the heat in the non air-conditioned room, with no fan, or windows that opened was like a Chinese sweat shop and we just could not sleep. Having opened the balcony door this did not help as only the noise came in and no draft. So we had to resort to opening the front room door to create a through draft that actually worked and the room cooled down enough to be more comfortable, but the street noise did not subside until around 5:30 in the morning, so we were extremely tired in the morning as we had to set the alarm so we could at least get our inclusive breakfast in the only room with air-conditioning before it closed at 10:00. At the reception there was one sympathetic guy and he tried his best to get us a better room but the hotel was over booked already so impossible. The reception was also a joke as the receptionists had one fan for three people and they were sodden with sweat which was quite amusing. It wasn't all doom and gloom and as it was only for 2 nights we knew that the next hotel destination would be completely different, so we just enjoyed the beach, the city and local places of interest and knew we would be off soon......
Having dragged ourselves out of bed we went down to breakfast, which was not too bad and quite a variety of food. Pretty much a self services buffet style, nothing special, but ok and in a nice cool room. After breakfast we decided not to stay at our hotel beach, which was very busy, but to go to another one along the west coast. .......... Photos and more to come.........
