Mallorca Road Trip

As the last post stated, we are now safely in Mallorca. The weather when we landed was hot and clear skies. So after a belated brunch of fruit and "ensaimadas" we all piled into the car and headed on the road. We were took the scenic route over the "Serra de Tramuntata" (mountains) and enjoyed wonderful views along the way. We stopped off on the way to view the terraces built up on the mountain side. These terraces are to help keep the soil for the trees from washing way when it rains. We continued up the mountain to Coll de Sa Bataia 579m in height. We stopped at the little restaurant there for some tapas of local grown olives (both green and black) tortilla , and an offal dish which I did try a little of but didn't like. All served with a lovely local unsalted brown bread and aioli. We were also introduced to a flat orange drink called Trinaranjus, which means "three oranges". It was very refreshing on a hot day. After a leisurely time spent in the shade we headed back into the car. We took a quick diversion by Santuari de Lluc which is a monastery. One of the things this monastery is famous for is it's boy's choir which has performed all over the world. We headed down the other side of the mountain towards Pollenca where we saw amazing views of Inca in the distance between the peaks and occasionally a sea view as we got closer to the bottom. Once on the north coast we stopped off at a little resort called Cala San Vicenc (where the photo at the top was taken). The sea was an amazing turquoise colour and although it was not much wind there was a small amount of waves crashing against the shoreline. Our next stop was up a very long, narrow and winding Peninsula Road at Cap de Formentor to the Talaia d'Albercutx, an 18th century watch tower above Cap Formentor in northern Mallorca. It is approximately 376m above sea level, and was donated in 1984 by the Capllonch Family to the people of Pollensa. There was great views of the coastline, sea and mountains. Very awe inspiring, if not a little scary at times. From there we could see the hotel Formentor, a historic 5 star hotel that has been the faviourite of many celbraties. It also was the setting for the 1981 version of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Evil Under the Sun starring Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg. With its own private beach and spectacular gardens, the hotel is a classic Mediterranean hideaway. After a quick "pitstop" in Puerto Pollenca, we headed back to our host's place, this time by the motorway, were we enjoyed a wonderfully cooked minute steak and salad with some locally produced wine. ¡salud!

Tapastry

DSC00246, originally uploaded by Bio-hazar.

Well another year has come and gone. Which means on Monday it's my Birthday. This year it's a BIG one. The big 40! I can't say that I've been very excited about my birthday this year. I didn't know what to do to celebrate it either. Then on Friday night I came up with an idea. For the next four days we'd go out for a meal each day, one for each decade of my life. Last night I decided to try the local Tapas bar called "Tapastry". We were seated and ordered a pitcher of Sangria and was left to peruse the menu. We ended up choose meatballs in tomato sauce, chorizo in honey, tortilla and egg white baby bell peppers. The evening was a nice lazy evening people watching and seeing the sun down. We were still a bit hungry so we also order the Tapastry Meze which was two different cold meats, fete cheese, olives, houmus and a few more bell peppers. We finished the evening we me trying my first Mojito and Peter had a Baileys latte. After two and a half hours, we walked hand in hand back home.