Pongo goes solo in Palma

 Today's stop off is Palma de Mallorca, unfortunately Perdita was felling a bit under the weather( hungover more like🤢🤢) From the boat there were 2 buildings that stood out from the rest, the Cathedral and the castle. So I was left with the apparently important task of finding a shot glass and post card from Palma. 




I had planned to walk the mile or so around the harbour to the Cathedral, so stuck with the plan and set off at a pace, before it got too hot. I think the harbour is one of the biggest I have seen, it is huge and there must be well over 300 boats here starting from the smallest little dingies probably costing a few €1,000 up to a few super yachts costing hundreds of €1,000,000. Darting between the shade of the boats were millions of fish again ranging in size from tidlers to fish of about 4lb(probably mullet).



The Cathedral certainly lived up to its billing the outside facade and grounds where absolutely beautiful, unfortunately the queue to get inside was one I wasn't prepared  to join, I could have been there for hours, and I had got more important things to find.










Right around the corner from the Cathedral, was a row of tat shops selling  just about anything Mallorca, including shot glasses an post cards(winner, winner chicken dinner) job done. I then set off up towards the castle via the center of town, which was very modern looking with all the usual shop, just like a sunny Manchester. The walk up to the castle took a bit longer than I had anticipated though I did take one or two detours, if I stumbled on an interesting street.

The castle itself is at the top of a hill, the lower part covered in apartment blocks whilst the top was covered in trees, with steps cutting through them to get you to the castle probably about 200(but I didn't count them). Then perched at the top was the castle, I payed my €4, and went inside. It had obviously had quite a lot on restoration work done at it, and a large car park added at the side. I will let the photos do the talking.












Perdita then text me to find out where I was and how long I would be, I checked Google maps which told me 30 minutes, though my Google legs told me I may be a bit longer. It took about 45 minutes to get back on the boat, were Perdita was waiting for me with a very welcome forest fruit iced coffee. Cheers!!!


Pongo and Perdita signing off .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get off your horse and drink your milk.

Image
 Today we stopped of at Cartagena(not the one in Columbia), I say this because every time I Google things to do in Cartagena the Columbian Cartagena comes up first. We have been here before and wanted to try something new and as a special treat for Perdita ( I have been promising her one for weeks if she walked up the rock on Gibraltar)  which she did on Thursday with lots of puffing and panting, dirty looks and even a few choice words. She even said she hated me( remember how that feels Bare), and for a time I think she really meant it. I had booked us in to go to an equestrian centre, to go for a hack( I am a novice, though Perdita is quite proficient) I had researched for this and we had to catch the Alsa L14 bus at the bus terminus, so when we got off the ship we got a map and the lady giving them out marked on the map the route we should take.We set of and arrived there in good time to catch said bus. Unfortunately when it arrived at the stop it just drove straight past us without
Read more

Chocolate, rum and a handmade cigar.

Image
            Today's destination is Amber Cove in the Domican Republic, we had booked to go diving down some waterfalls, however my knee has been playing up for the last  couple of days and although the first part of the trip was by coach, the last 40 minutes involve quite a severe up hill climb, so I reluctantly gave in to Perdita's sensible side, and we changed our trip to a more sedate Flavours of Puerta Plata (meaning silver port) tour. The tour started at 12.30 pm and 1st stage involved a coach trip to a local farm,out in the sticks, where we were treated to a taster of 3 rums, all from the same company(Brugal), one a young dark rum, another aged in American whiskey casks and a white rum, the aged one had been aged for 10 years and was obviously the  best and being a rum drinker I bought a bottle to enjoy once I got back home with friends. Whilst at the farm,we were provided with our lunch which was a buffet if rice and a beef and chicken stew with potatoes, sweet potatoes,
Read more

Houston we have a problem!!!!

Image
          The next day was the half way point of our adventure, so dictated we were back at Port Canaveral for the swap over of new passengers and crew, it also meant that everyone on board had to get off the ship to go through the American immigration checks, this included all the crew members as well. Some of the life boat had been lowered, though I am not sure if that was for planned maintenance or do the immigration officers could do spot checks for stowaways or maybe a bit of both.           We had booked ourselves on a full day excursion to  Cape Canaveral Space Center, which was the most expensive trip we had booked at over £100 each, so we had high expectations. I deliberately left out one thing in earlier blogs, thinking it would fit into this nicely. On our 1st day whilst we were leaving Port Canaveral we were lucky enough to witness a space launch, which was amazing and probably the highlite of the holiday so far. The lauch should have taken place the prevois day
Read more