Here is a brief recap of the week first:
Saturday: Touched down in Palma and immediately took cabs to our hostel. Found that our "room" was actually an apartment-style living quarters complete with a kitchen (no oven and only two burners on the stove but hey, I can't complain), 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, and of course a balcony. Even better than this was the fact that we were literally like 100 feet from the shore of the Mediterranean. Perfect. Dinner and drinking on the balcony completed our first night.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday & Thursday: Hung out on the beach. The weather was around 22C most of the time we were there and there was a nice breeze over the shoreline so it was a pretty perfect time to sit on the beach all day. Our routine was to get there around 11am, lay around, play soccer, take a dip in the water (disclaimer: if you ever go to Palma, or presumably anywhere in the Mediterranean, BEWARE OF JELLYFISH.
There were too many to count when we were there. Seriously.), lay out more, go home to shower, and get dinner. It. Was. Awesome. Sunday I think was the only day when we started out our morning by walking the strip along the beach, which is actually where I got my sunburn from. Other than that, pale Kate only got a little color because she was a good kid and used SPF 40.Wednesday: Decided to break up the beach routine by renting bikes for a couple of hours, costing us around 4 euro. It was probably the best decision that we made the entire trip, even though my butt felt like it was bruised for about 3 days afterwards due to extremely hard seats. It was a fantastic way to see more of the coastline, though. We broke up into groups, so four of the guys and I went over to the southeast side of the cove, which turned out to be much more hilly and less populated than the northwest side. We went as far out to the tip of the cove as humanly possible before riding downhill the entire way back to the rental shop. It was a fantastic workout and we deservedly collapsed on the beach after returning our bikes.
Friday: The other three girls and I took a bus into city center to explore a little bit. We had heard that there was great shopping in the area, but to our dismay discovered it was closed due to the Spanish Labor Day, I believe (Sarah -- true?). Nevertheless, we were able to walk around and check out the Palma Cathedral before sitting down to a nice lunch and finally heading back to the hostel. From there it was the typical dinner and drinks on the balcony night we'd been having all week, followed by pictures on the beach at sunset.
Highlights of the week: biking, Del Sol restaraunt, tequila (eek), cheap and delicious gelato, beach, soccer, the balcony, and a serious bonding experience with the 9 other people on the trip.
We returned yesterday, and as we landed it was freezing and pouring rain. Welcome back to Ireland. We did, however, see a triple rainbow on the way home, so that was pretty cool.
It's so weird to think that I will be returning to the states in just over two weeks. All that stands between me and that plane ride on Aer Lingus home is a week off and then four finals. Wow. Yikes.
Anyway, I will throw a link in here when the pictures have been added on facebook, I've just been waiting to steal more from people since my stupid camera died.
yes, spanish labor day literally shuts everything down. also, the spanish people tried to tell us that it was labor day in the united states too, which clearly it was not.
ReplyDeletemallorca sounds awesome! how was your spanish? do they have a weird accent there?
my spanish was pretty sad, considering i took it all throughout high school, but i did manage to get around. to be honest i couldn't really tell about their accent just because i haven't been in enough predominantly spanish-speaking areas to tell. most of the people spoke at least broken english anyway, since the place was so touristy.
ReplyDelete