SPAIN (PALMA DE MALLORCA) MARCH/APRIL 2025

Gatwick to Mallorca is fast, and a return for Sarah after 35 years when she was here as a Thomson’s holiday rep. The airport is now huge so it’s a long walk to get out, but then a 15-minute and 20 Euros cab ride to our hotel, the Can Cirera right in the middle of town, just under the Cathedral. This is a charming place with tight cobbled streets and at this time of year not too crowded with cruise ship tours. We take a stroll and, after a gin and tonic listening to a busker murder a range of Beatles songs, dine at La Cana as a brisk onshore breeze quickens the temperature.

The next day we declare a culture morning and head to a range of museums. The Museo Palau March is a delight – an ornate palace full of interesting art, and there is no one there. The Royal Palace (Palau Reial) is also excellent with huge sweeping balconies and views of the sea. The queue for the cathedral is unappealing (book online and you can go straight in) so we head down scores of backstreets to Banos Arabes – the Arab baths. The Moors ran the city somewhere back in the 1100s, and these are the remnants, although no one really knows how old they are. This is a quaint small place to visit, and worth traipsing through many backstreets to reach.

Meanwhile the Museo de Mallorca is rather dull. 90% of the paintings are of Jesus in a range of agonies, and it goes on and on. There were only two other people there. We emerge blinking into the sunlight to have a beer in Placa Santa Eulalia at the Café Moderna, founded 1914. We presumably sat in the same place as German troops occupying the place. After a well-earned nanny nap we went down to the seafront/marina to El Pesquero to have Bloody Marys and dinner overlooking the water. Pleasant, but it would have been nicer to look at the sea rather than just boats.

The next morning we visit the huge Catedral next door. The light streaming in from the massive stained-glass window appears to turn the place into a huge disco. Very impressive, and good to see all visitors behaving in a suitably reverential way. After more wandering about in the backstreets we come across the Esbaluard Museum of Contemporary Art which is suitably obscure but has a large terrace ideal for lunch and drinks. In the evening we have outdoor Bloody Marys opposite another large church – La Llotia – followed by spare ribs and succulent turbot at Koa.

The following day we set off to walk round the seafront to Cala Major, but the roadworks and endless marina made it somewhat tedious, so we cut inland to the Pueblo Espanol – an interesting architectural museum which takes the form of an entire village consisting of different styles of castle, turrets, streets and stairways. Really interesting to wander about. In the evening we decide to have Bloody Marys on the waterfront at a posh bar called Mar de Nudos. They were 18 Euros each. The sunset was nice but the price wasn’t. Dinner was a strange business. We had perfectly nice olives and G+Ts before ordering our meal just before a large group in. They were served long before us and after a lot of chasing ours arrived. Sarah’s Vongole was merely a collection of shells with nothing inside, and mine was a blob of spaghetti. When we said we were leaving the owner was so embarrassed, or knew the game was up, that he didn’t charge us for our wine or anything. No dinner that night.

The next day we change to the Palma Bay Melia hotel where we are speaking at a conference. This is a pleasant 20-minute stroll along the seafront. There’s not much going on out here, but we do manage to find a seafront bar called Assaona behind a pretty-much-deserted strip of shops and apartments. It’s full of poseurs but sits right on the beach and so it’s a good way to soak up the sun with a glass in hand. In the evening we walk a little further round the bay to Portixol, which is very much another marina, albeit smaller than the main one in Palma. Tapas dinner also in the sun on the terrace at Periplo is pleasant, with constant amusement from the huge number of windsurfers fizzing about out to sea. After delivering our talk the following day we are free to return to Portixol, where we find an excellent bar/restaurant called Izizi, where we dig in for the afternoon.

Concluding remarks on Palma de Mallorca. This is my first visit and Sarah’s first for 35 years after her early experience as a Thomson’s rep. The airport is huge, with flights coming in from all sorts of regional airports such as Leeds and Bournemouth, but it all works well and many of the flights are so short it feels like a commuter service. The old city of Palma is lovely, with numerous backstreets and a profusion of interesting architecture. Things get a bit more messy on the stag night strip and the marinas and cruise ship port are something of an eyesore. On a longer trip the north should certainly be explored, with its mountains and rugged beaches. There are plenty of cultural experiences, museums etc. and numerous food options. Assuming the weather holds, which it very much did for us, then this is very much a 9 out of 10.