Aus dem Urlaub zurück oder back from vacation

It's kind of a long post today because I have a few days to catch up on where I was actually doing something and there are more pictures than usual.

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DH and I got back from vacation yesterday. It was a short trip, but it was just what both of us needed. We went to Palma de Mallorca, Spain. There's an airline here in Europe called Ryanair. They are cheap and no frills; I mean none. A few years ago Ryanair floated an idea to have passengers pay for toilets. Definitely no frills, but they are still cheap and the flights aren't too long.

We got there Friday early evening and took a taxi to our hotel and got a first look at the sights. Everything looked great. The hotel that we stayed at promised free bicycle loans, but it turned out that all (four) of their bicycles were out for repair. Bummer.

Ice cream disguised as coffee. I like it!

Saturday, we got up at our normal time, about seven a.m. We got a slow start and found a coffee place at about 8:45. They weren't open until 9. I had forgotten the way places in Spain get to a late start in the mornings. We came back in a few minutes and had coffee. I had an "iced mocha", which was pretty much chocolate ice cream in a coffee cup. Yum!

Palma Cathedral

We walked around a bit more, and went to the cathedral in town. It was really beautiful, with a different style of stained glass than I've seen in other cathedrals. After that was lunch, and then a siesta. Since DH and I are getting old, it's nice to take a break and rest for a while in the afternoon.

St. Pat's Day Guinness

After the siesta, we headed back out to dinner. Since it was St. Patty's Day, DH wanted to have a Guinness. He had had one earlier in the day, but it was St. Patty's, so we headed over to one of the Irish pubs that we found in the city. It's amazing how there is nearly no city that you can go to that doesn't have an Irish pub. DH got his Guinness and then we decided to have dinner at the pub. Unfortunately, there was no where to sit at the bar and all of the tables were reserved, so we had to change plans and had Chinese for dinner instead. After dinner there was a second stop at the pub for another Guinness, and back to the hotel.

The next morning, since the hotel's bicycles weren't available, we decided to find a place to rent some. After picking up the bicycles, we started to make our way up to Bellver Castle.  We took a couple of wrong turns and ended up at the Nuevo Pueblo Espanol instead. It was really cool and totally worth the diversion. There was practically no one else there and it was really fun to wander around all the different buildings. It actually reminded me a lot of the Tomb Raider video game. 

Walking down the empty streets of
Nuevo Pueblo Espanol.

After wandering to our hearts' content, we made our way to the castle. It was uphill quite a ways, but the bicycle had low gears and I wasn't too sweaty at the top. The castle was free, for some reason, and it was another fun place to wander. Next we headed out on our bikes and rode east for a while. It was beautiful, riding next to the ocean, with the sea breeze and sunshine. We rode out for about an hour, plus a couple of stops, then turned around and made it back to Palma in forty-five minutes. We took the bikes back, and then it was siesta time. We had dinner at the Irish pub that night. I had a Cobb salad with chicken. Pretty tasty.

We saw kite surfers while we were riding our bikes

Bellver Castle

Monday morning we woke up kind of slowly and then checked our flight information. The flight was about two hours earlier than I had thought. Whoops! We packed up our stuff quickly and had the front desk at the hotel call a taxi. Within half an hour, we were at the airport. Security was the quickest I have ever gone through it, which was nice. Then it was the normal waiting for the flight and then flying home. 

Ah, the sun and the sea. I'll get back there again, someday.

It was a quick trip, but it was very restorative. Both DH and I were surprised at how needed this vacation was. We reconnected and spent some quality time together. We saw some beautiful new sights. It has made the last few days of this 2WW much more bearable. I see more vacations in the future.


CD 23, 10 dp trigger