tstone

            Wednesday morning, my parents caught their flight home and that afternoon, Gina and I were on a plane to Mallorca, Playa de Palma to be specific.  Gina booked us a great hotel right on the beach.  We got in around 5 and got a ton of tourist info at the airport, but we decided to hop a bus to Palma and walked all around getting pictures of the cathedral, marina, and some city sights.  It?s a nice little city and fairly cheap as well.  We settled for another kebab as grocery stores seemed nonexistent, and a sit down meal can get pricey.  We picked up some wine and sangria on the way home and sat on the beach til midnight sipping and chatting.

            The next day started out a little cloudy and got worse.  It obviously not a good beach day, so we rented a moto for the day and buzzed around the coastal towns southeast of our hotel.  It was a riot.  We got to see some other beaches, grabbed some lunch during a rain storm, and found some nice views along the way.  I was a little nervous driving with those crazy Spaniards but we managed alright.  The long hills killed us but going down them we got up to 80 km/h.  We had had enough after about four and a half hours so we returned it and took a stroll along the waterfront.  There was a nice bike lane and a ton of serious cyclists out all weekend.  Most of them were German, like the rest of the tourists there.  We think that we were the only people in our hotel that were both under 60 and not German.  We felt like we should have been retired.  We went to a bunch of gift shops along the way then watched the sun set over the water before getting a burger, fries, and a hefty beer.  Must have been the German influence haha.  We crashed early that night and were ready for a day of sunbathing when we woke up.

            We got out on the beach around 11:30 and only moved for some lunch, then headed in around 6.  At lunch we had some great bocadillos and Gina got a huge cocktail, the one which we came with a sparkler at night but just some tinsel during the day? not quite as cool, but it was delicious and the huge straw was fun.  We cleaned up nice and headed into Palma for a nice dinner.  We ended up outside by the marina and had a wonderful meal.  I got two whole grilled squid?s with some fries, and Gina got peppers stuffed with a cod filling; both were excellent.  We wondered around a little and got some delicious gelato (for the second time at the same place) then went home to pack up.

            In the morning we caught about an hour of sun on the beach and I jumped in (and right out) of the chilly water.  We picked up some more bocadillos to go and we were back in Barcelona after a 40 minutes flight.  We found our hotel off Las Ramblas and did some souvenir shopping before getting a tapas dinner at our favorite football bar and heading home.  It was a great end to a fantastic week of traveling.  Sunday I saw Gina off at the airport and wished she didn?t have to go.  Now we?ll have some European memories that we?ll always remember.