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Leaving Palma in the early afternoon still left us with enough time to take a short trip into the Tramontana mountains and the village of Caimari north of Palma, famous for its olive oil, a tip from a young Mallorcan lady that sit next to us on the plane. Little did we know what the whole village was completely abandoned on the day before Easter Sunday. No shops were opened and noone in sight. We wandered through the whole village feeling like beeing in a scene of The Walking Dead, a serie we were so addicted to lately ;-). With not much to do, we decided to drive further onto the mountain and headed to the Lluc Monastery.

The road to Lluc is pretty narrow and curvy, it was also quite popular to mountain bikers, who were everywhere, so I can’t say it was a fun drive. Besides, I had to shift the gears so often that I had a sore leg the next day, a clear sign of degenerated muscles caused by always driving cars with automatic transmission ;-).

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It was a very last-minute decision to go on this trip. We were so tired of the cold weather in Munich that we were so desperate to get on just any flight heading South, but it wasn’t easy to find anything last-minute for Easter weekend. After 2 days of desperate searching for just anything/anywhere in hope for a little sunshine, we took the last 2 available tickets and headed to Mallorca for a Friday-to-Monday weekend, though we never wanted to come here.

Why?
Forgive me if I’m being judgemental, but Mallorca is very popular among all-inclusive party-goers who do nothing but sunbathing all day and partying all night, not the kind of people we want to bump into on our vacation.

So why didn’t we start planning earlier knowing everywhere would be booked out on Easter weekend?
Well, our schedule this past half year was so crazy we couldn’t fit any trip into it. Thus, I had an OP on my foot just a couple weeks ago that did not really allow me to go anywhere. But when did that ever stop me..

Did we like it at the end?
Totally. We had 8 hours of sunshine every day and even though it wasn’t warm enough for swimming, we spent most of our time outside and just soaked it all in. We also opted to stay in Porto Petro (on the east coast of the island) to be able to “escape” the crowds and have enough privacy to relax and enjoy ourselves. Since I could not walk for long, we also kept our touristy activities at a minimum level. On Saturday, we rented a car and took a little tour to Palma and other villages on the west coast. The rest of the time was spent doing not much, exactly what we needed.

What were our impressions?
All good. Porto Petro is a tiny village with a small port, very quiet and tranquil. Palma is touristy, as expected, and its harbor is about one of the busiest in Europe. But it also has a nice old town quarter that reminded me of Barcelona, and the close proximity to both the beach and the mountain is a plus. The whole island is full of olive and fruit plantations with a very typical Cote d’Azur flair: a little rusty, a little abandoned, but very chic. On top of that, the water is crystal clear.

Would we come back again?
Definitely. The island is huge and we only got to see a small part of it (J sailed around it once in a week but he only knew it from a sailor’s perspective), so we can totally see ourselves coming back here for another long weekend in the future.

Here are some photos J took of Palma on our sightseeing day.