Palma de Mallorca

The capital city of Mallorca is Palma, a very cool city that mixes ancient, old, and new. The history of the area is long and pretty cool.

Mallorca has been settled by a variety of peoples stretching back to the Roman empire in BCE years. After the Romans, it was part of the Byzantine empire before falling under Islamic control from 902-1229. Before Muslim control was fully established (around the 8th century), there was divided power amongst Moors, Christian groups, and the expanding power of Islam. The economy of the island at the time had a lot to do with sacking ships that got too close (aka piracy), but they weren't totally pirates and had to be defended from a full-on pirate invasion in 799 by Charlemagne.

You're a pirate. Where else would you want to be?

In the mid-9th century, they got invaded again, but this time by Vikings! Somehow I never really connected post-Roman Southern Europe with Vikings until now, but I'm getting great mental images of suntanning Viking dudes.

Anyway, once the Vikings sacked the place, the Muslim empire took advantage of instability and took over the island for real. As the Emirate started to fall, however, the island turned into a major Christian port (very useful during the crusades, ironically), and eventually became part of Spain.

There is evidence of all this history on the island today, from the medieval city walls surrounding the port city (I kept thinking of Troy) to the former smuggling trails build before the turn of the second millennium. Every time we hiked something I bugged Martin by babbling about how old the stone parts of the trail probably were.

The cathedral was begun in 1229, but it was built on the site of a pre-existing mosque so its basis is even older than that. It shows evidence of the mosque in some cool tiling, but it's generally very very Gothic--flying buttresses and everything.

 Cathedral!

Inside the city walls, it's a modern city built on an old European base. There are tiny narrow streets, plazas, and a lack of right angles; all next to a full-on boulevard with wide sidewalks and stores like H&M, Zara, and Mango (which I will revisit as SOON as I can spend money).

Me with a GIANT olive tree, Martin with a fountain. Both in plazas!

We spent a day exploring, we even had lunch in this fabulous old restaurant (of which I CAN NOT find my pictures!) whose walls were lined with giant wine barrels and where the waitstaff basically ran around the cafeteria-style space serving the tons of local Spanish and tourists there for the very good Menu del Dia (a standard lunch special where you get an appetizer, entree, and dessert from a list plus wine and bread/olives for like $9. Pretty awesome!).

 Plazas (above the main plaza, below a pretty garden)!

 This street looks a little bit like small-scale Brooklyn to me.

Love Katie

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! 

Mallorquian Words of the Day

Like Switzerland with German, Mallorca has its own dialect of Spanish. The Mallorcan dialect is similar to Catalan (the French/Spanish language spoken in Barcelona), but it’s still recognizably Spanish. Here are some examples!

Platja: noun, beach. The normal Spanish spelling here would be playa, but it’s pronounced much the same.

            As in, “me gusta la platja.” I like the beach.

Gazpatxo: noun, Gazpacho, the traditional Spanish cold vegetable soup. The letters tx make a ch sound in Mallorquian. This is also seen in the name of the part of the island we’re staying on, which is spelled Andratx and pronounced Andrach.

As in, “Es calor hoy, solo podemos comer gazpatxo.” It’s hot today, we can only eat gazpacho.

Inland Adventures

Yesterday Martin and I went away from the coast a bit to explore some of the rest of Mallorca. We had so much fun! First stop was a town called Sineu where they have a giant market every Wednesday. We had to get up early (well...early Spanish time, so 8:30. It's not like we were setting an alarm or anything) to make sure we got to see everything.

Got there! Time to go exploring.

We followed people who looked like they knew where they were going through narrow streets for a little while. Every house had green shutters and they were packed really close together. There was no sign of people in the houses except for sounds coming from within, but it gets so hot there that life takes place mostly indoors.

These green shutters are all over Mallorca. It's really pretty against the earthy houses!

After a little while, we started to see more people and there was the market! The first part we hit was all food--fruits, veggies, nuts, dried fruits, bread, cheese (from a wide variety of animals), and salami. We sampled everything we could and bought cherries, grapes, figs, dried figs, and a couple of empanadas for the walk and for later.

 

 

There was a non-food section after that (I'm telling you, this thing was giant. It filled up the whole city) with leather goods manufactured on the island, shoes, clothes, scarves, and jewelry. I didn't bring enough money for that, but I wanted to buy gifts for basically everyone I know. There was also an animals section with the scariest pigeon I have ever seen. Who buys pigeons? They're everywhere!

 The whole thing took place throughout this really old-style town, complete with random statuary and a beautiful cathedral.

After all of that we went to the towns of Inca and Binissalem, then to Alaro where we climbed a mountain to find a castle. We'll have to wait to cover that, though, since my computer is dying and there aren't any plugs here!

Love Katie

The Mediterranean!!

Hi All,

Sorry I've been so spotty with the posting lately, it's a little bit challenging to find internet here (on Mallorca!) and I'll be the first to admit that I've been focusing a little more on vacationing than being a good blogger. We're in Mallorca! We're staying at Martin's family apartment here, which is really cool and right by the beach in a spot called Costa de la Calma. Right when we got here we went down to the beach for a swim in the amazingly warm water of the Mediterranean. I still can't believe that's where we are!

This is the beach by our apartment, we're right up the hill. 

There are bigger sandy beaches (more on those later) but 

these are small and secluded so there's hardly anyone else there.

We swam out a little ways, and saw a firefighting plane--one of the ones with the giant water bays on the bottom--touch down on the bay to scoop up water. We looked where it was going and part of the island was on fire! Not near any houses or anything, just a brush fire, but we got to watch them (quickly) put it out with the plane and a few water-carrying helicopters. It was pretty cool, especially since nothing was damaged and nobody was hurt. 

So far we've done a few cool things. We spent a day at a nearby local beach called Paguera where we did some swimming and sunbathing (I got burned despite sunscreen. Better now!). We also hiked down there to see the European soccer championship semifinal game with Germany, since that area is typically full of German tourists. I had a pina colada that was absolutely excellent! Definitely made me feel like I was on vacation.

 

Paguera!

The next day Spain was playing in the soccer championships, so we went to Palma de Mallorca, the main city here, and explored before watching the game. So far Spain and Germany have advanced to the quarterfinals! I'm hoping they both make the final so we can watch it here with the respective crowds. 

Palma is a harbor city with a cool mix of history and touristy attractions. There are lots of bars, clubs and shops along the main street, but there are also super old city walls, within which is an old-style city with narrow stone streets and a more Spanish feel. Still touristy, but more authentically so? I'm not sure if I can make that qualification. Either way, we found a bar full of Spanish fans in the old city and watched Spain make the semifinal, then went for tapas at a nearby restaurant. We wandered around and checked out the cathedral (holy cow) after that. 

Part of the main street in Palma. 

The coast runs to the right along the street, the city wall is visible on the left, 

and the cathedral in the background.

Other than that, we've been doing a lot of swimming, exploring, tanning, and reading; with some bike riding and running thrown in there. It's been really fun so far, and I'll update again soon!

Love Katie

Small Country Drama!

Liechtenstein is having a historical political moment right now.  The prince is threatening to leave!!

Our main character: the prince of Liechtenstein. With his castle. Where he lives.

 

The prince of Liechtenstein (it's a principality, by the way) is facing a popular vote that will determine if he gets to keep his veto power. It works a lot like the US presidential veto power in that he can veto a bill that's passed the elected legislative bodies, except that his veto cannot be overridden by a legislative or popular vote. After he threatened to veto any bill legalizing abortion a while ago, there's a lot of rumbling that maybe they should be able to outvote his veto if he decides to go nuts. Hypothetically, of course.

Act as a figurehead? Not in my principality! I'm out. Potentially.

So the popular vote is going on right now to determine whether he gets to keep his royal power, and it's very controversial. There is a significant conservative base, and the original abortion bill that got vetoed only passed the popular vote by 51%. So much on the line! Added to that, citizenship in Liechtenstein is complicated and a little unforgiving, so the voting population is even smaller that the 33,000-person resident population. Which is why they had a popular vote on a bill anyway.

I am too fabulous to exist without my princely power. Vote for me!!

In a country that's generally super-conservative (again, 51%), this vote is major. But you have to admit, the prince threatening to leave if he doesn't win makes it a little bit awesome.

Love Katie

PS Please check an actual news source if you want a better idea of what's going on. I will be the first to admit that my research on this was a combination of hearsay and minimal googling.

Driving to Liechtenstein

Martin's family lives in Liechtenstein, which is a teeny tiny little (did you get that it's small) country of about 33,000 inhabitants between Austria and Switzerland near Germany. The country is in part of the Rhine river valley (the river itself forms the border with Switzerland) and roughly half of an Alp. Liechtenstein itself is insanely gorgeous (more on that later when I have proper pictures), the 90-minute drive between Zurich and Liechtenstein is also very scenic.

Martin and I drove to his parents' house last weekend to say hi and pick up some furniture (thanks to his parents our room is fully furnished and excellent!), and we are there now getting ready to go to Mallorca (!). It was a beautiful day, so we got a good look at all of the alpine scenery.

Please note the castle perched atop the little hill in the foreground!

The drive starts out through farmland that feels very, very Swiss. It's all green meadows, cows grazing, and a skyline of silos and farmhouses; backdropped by the foothills of the Alps.

I'm pretty sure this is what yodeling looks like.

Once it starts to get a little more mountainous, there are tunnels so long that they have jet engine-looking fans inside to keep fresh air moving through them. Holding your breath here is definitely not an option.

And, as this is the land of Bond villains, as we started getting closer to Liechtenstein there was a definite supervillian lair under construction.

 Pictured: evil in the making.

As I mentioned, Liechtenstein and Switzerland are divided by the Rhine river. We drove along the river for a while, so what you see on the left side of the picture below is Switzerland, while the mountains on the right side are mostly Liechtenstein! I'm not sure if we're actually at the border yet in this picture, so the right bank of the river may or may not be Liechtenstein. If not, Switzerland.

We plan to climb that mountain. I'm excited.

Love Katie