Since we were arriving pretty late on Saturday, we stayed at a hotel not very far from the airport.
A decent place - nothing fancy. It turns out that it's actually really close to one of the sights in Palma - Castell de Belver, so the next morning we took a look. It was constructed in the 14th century and it looks like it's in really good condition still, and as you might guess from its name, has really great views over the capital city, Palma de Mallorca, and the port.
In this picture, you can see the cathedral that was originally right on the water (they have since reclaimed land in front of it to build a road and expand the port, I think, so it's not quite as on the water as it used to be, but it's still an impressive structure).
After that we checked out the "rowdy British" part of the island, just to see it, since we've heard lots of (bad) things about it. It was as expected, and we didn't take any pictures, but we did see this crazy skinny building standing all alone.
We drove up part of the western side of the island, which is mountainous with lots of nice curvy roads and lots of view points.
We also stopped at La Granja, a 10th century manor-turned-monastery-turned-museum/folklore center. It was first built around a natural spring which you can see in some of the pictures. It has exhibits about traditional Mallorcan culture. I took a video of the neat functioning water wheel, which I'll put up on youtube at some point (for Dad).
We drove to our next hotel (the one we stayed at for the rest of the time we were there) after that and checked in. It's located in Cala Rajada on the north eastern coast of the island. We liked it because it is right on the edge of the town, next to some woods and a beach. It turned out be not the best beach because it was always busy and pretty crowded, but we had a nice view from our balcony:
The next day we walked through the woods to the closest beach, Cala Agulla, and then to the next one along, Cala Mesquida, which ended up being our favorite beach while we were there. We also went up the mountain/hill that was there. It wasn't super high but enough to make my legs hurt!
While we were walking we saw some goats, and although this goat wasn't very high off the ground, the day before I had actually seen a goat in a tree, high up in the branches - it was crazy. This one isn't very impressive, but it's still a goat climbing a tree.
This is a view of where we stayed - it's past the beach you can see - you can see the woods that our balcony looks out on.
The rest of the week, we toured the island , walked some more, and went to our favorite beach a few times.
This was a beach we visited, on the south coast of the island (Es Trenc), that was meant to be quite good, but we thought it was terrible. There was a lot of sea weed and other natural detritus, and it was just busy and not very nice.
After that it was back to the beach we liked:
We had taken a couple of games with us, including a new one, which we both now like a lot.
One of our trips was to the very northern tip of the island - Cap de Formentor. There is a lighthouse there, and a nice beach nearby. There are lots of tour buses that go up there, which is crazy, since the road is really curvy and not very wide.
It was also a really popular road for cyclists, and we were very impressed since it's a really long climb. Here's the peloton, on the ascent:
We had seen what we thought was an observatory when we flew in over the island. Turns out it's a military site, and we did end up getting a better look on one of our touring days, though we're still not sure what it's for:
We think, from our experience in Mallorca, and previously in Menorca, that there is just something special about Spanish dogs. They just seem to have a lot of personality. Here's one we captured, who found a resting place in the shade after a long arduous crossing of the nearby road:
And surprisingly, for a beachy vacation destination, it took us until our very last evening on the island to have a drink with a straw entirely out of proportion...
