Mountaintop Castle!

After exploring the market in Sineu and doing a little more exploring in Inca and Binissalem, Martin and I headed to Alaró in search of a castle on the top of a mountain. The city of Alaró is a lot like others we’d seen on the island: stone streets flanked by earth-toned stucco houses, kelly green shutters closed against the afternoon heat. As we left the town, we started driving up towards the trailhead on a road that started out narrow got smaller, adding in hairpin switchbacks as we climbed.

Olive orchard in the foreground, mountain in the background! We’ll be climbing that.

Nice straight portion of road.

After about a half hour of working our way up, the road ended at a town that consisted of one house, one restaurant, and a lot of goats. We parked in the olive grove/parking lot and started our climb on foot towards the castle.

 On the trail.

Almost there!

Castle gates

At the top of the trail, we went through the first wall and climbed to the castle itself.

Hi Martin!

Although a practically thousand-year-old castle is very cool, the view itself is what made the hike. We climbed a little further to the very top of the mountain where we could see the edge of the island on the South, West, and North sides. By our calculation, this is the highest mountain we could climb on Mallorca (the highest is for military purposes, so no civilians allowed).

Looking down at our starting point

Looking towards Palma

Neighbor mountain and the sea

Once we’d had our fill of the really spectacular views, we headed back down and had an early (by Spanish standards, so normally timed) dinner at the restaurant that made up the town below. So much fun!

Love Katie

PS Further posts to come on our explorations of the capital city of Palma, the west coast of the island, and lots of other things!