mallorca...!

After all of the stress of the previous few weeks, a couple of friends (Cantrell, Matt and Vern) and I decided that we needed to just get out of Oxford for a few days. So in truly spontaneous fashion, on the Monday afternoon after we had turned in our operations assignments, we sat around the common room searching for good travel deals online. At about 6pm we found a great flight and hotel combination on expedia for Mallorca, for a flight leaving at 6am the following morning… So, of course we booked it! We went home and packed and met at 2am for the bus ride to Gatwick!

We arrived in Mallorca to beautiful sunshine and palm trees, and then took a cab to our beautiful hotel. From the reception desk, I looked behind me and was stunned by the view off of the balcony, we all ran out there, leaving out luggage at the front desk in our haste to appreciate the sea, and just stared out at the Mediterranean for a few moments. Lovely. Our rooms had balconies with the same view, and it took about an hour just to get us to leave the hotel!

We spent Tuesday wandering the area around our hotel. We found a lovely place for lunch right on the pier serving some fabulous tapas. We had the largest pile of calamari I’ve ever seen, some shrimps, some octopus, and I can’t remember what else – it was yummy, and of course accompanied by some sangria! We lounged around in the afternoon on the balcony at the hotel, and then ventured into Palma, the main city, for dinner and a walk.

Dinner that night was at a place called Forn in the old city area, and was also fabulous… More tapas, which was great, but the real highlight of the meal was dessert – strawberries stuffed with crème brulee… can you think of a nicer combination?? It was amazing.

Wednesday we rented a car and spent the day driving up the coast of the island. I was on driving duty for most of the day, and it was really, really lovely to drive on the road up the coast. A super winding road with gorgeous views of the sea and the mountains and the villages at pretty much every turn. We had lunch at a restarant built into the cliff along the road! We also made it to a few of the destination towns, like Dea and Valldermossa. After leaving Valdermossa, I was driving along some more of the windy road when all of a sudden the red engine light came on and the car lost its power steering! Not a good thing to happen on those roads!! I couldn’t easily stop, as I would have created a big hazard, so I muscled through driving back about 5 miles to a gas station we had passed. We called the rental car company and waited about an hour for them to bring us a new car. Joy.

Thursday morning Matt and Cantrell had to head back to Oxford, but Vern and I stayed another day. We dropped them at the airport and then took off towards the north of the island. We visited Alcudia, an old Moorish city, which has really well preserved town walls. After that we drove up to the northern tip, Formenta, where there is some amazing natural scenery. Afterwards we stopped in a city by the bay and relaxed in the sun for a bit before heading back to the our hotel at the south of the island.

Dinner that evening was amazing. We went to a restaurant called Opio at the Puro hotel (http://www.purohotel.com/) , and got there about 11pm. The dining room was beautiful, the service was excellent, and the food, well, the food was outstanding.

YUM! A great end to a very yummy and very relaxing vacation.