So, after a long delay, I’m back at it to finish writing up Mark’s and my Mediterranean Odyssey. I left off after Cannes when I realized that the iPad had been disabled. Our next stop was two weeks ago today in Palma, which is the largest city on Mallorca and capital of the Balearic Islands, which are in turn part of the Catalonian region of Spain.
We didn’t arrive in Mallorca until late morning on Saturday, so we took the opportunity to sleep in (again). The timeline gets a little fuzzy here because I actually spent my first couple hours of the day on the balcony writing up Cannes. It wouldn’t be until Saturday night that I would discover the iPad issue.
I should have taken a picture of it to prove my point, but I have to say that our balcony wasn’t the nicest place to hang out. I remember balconies on other cruises being more, oh, I don’t know, “open” feeling or homey in some way. This balcony had two cheap chairs and the old-style indoor/outdoor green carpet that made it look like a very small putting green. The walls/dividers were clinically uninteresting—even forbidding—so being out there to “relax” felt more like being in an asylum cell. Having said that, though, it was a decent place to write or to look out at the shore as long as you didn’t pay attention to the balcony itself. Norwegian could improve a little here, I think.
Our scheduled excursion in Palma is one I would recommend to just about anyone. “Pedal Palma” is a fun, informative, interesting, and—believe it or not—relaxing bicycle tour of the city. And in our case, it started out with an annoying but funny incident.
The group of people who had signed up for the tour gathered just off the ship until our guide, James, could account for all of us. We ended up being forty-seven—far more than I expected— including an older couple dressed alike, with her in flip-flops and gold chains and he looking dangerously like a cross between Mr. Howell and the Skipper. Mark had noticed them, too, and later admitted to me that he was a little trepidatious about this ride until seeing them, at which point he decided, “Oh, I can do this if they can.” Once we were assembled, we walked for about ten minutes en masse to a nearby park. I’m sure the drivers who had to wait for father goose and his forty-seven duckings to cross the street were rolling their eyes (or whatever the Mallorcan equivalent is).
James was our tour leader, but because we were so many, he had two associates and planned to divide us up into three groups. He asked us to count off (it felt a little like preparing for a dodgeball game in grade school), after which we would split up and go get our bikes. Somewhere around “seven,” the Gilligan’s Island couple kind of pushed forward and asked “Go get bicycles?!” James looked at them very kindly (I’m sure he was rolling his eyes now, too) and said, “Yes. We tour the city on bikes. What did you think ‘Pedal Palma’ meant?” That reads more nasty than it came across in person—James was actually very nice and understanding. He told the exasperated couple that they would have to go back to the ship to book something else if they didn’t want to ride, reassuring them that he would call the ship in a minute to let them know the situation. He started to turn back to the rest of the group—and here’s where the annoying part comes in—when she clamored, “CALL THEM NOW!” James laughed and pulled out his phone. I wanted to pop her on the back of her hair-helmeted head. “Hey, lady? You screwed up, not us. We only have so many hours here, and I don’t want you squandering them because you’re so stupid.” I held my tongue, though (well, more or less; I did say as much to Mark, who shushed me).
James got the troublesome couple on their way (she did apologize, I suppose I should admit), and we started counting again into three groups of fifteen; James would be leading group two—our group. We collected our bikes, adjusted the seats as needed, clipped on baskets if we wanted them, bought water, and started on our way.
What is there to say about a bicycle tour? The streets weren’t particularly crowded, so it was mostly easy to get around, and for a good part of it, we were on a designated bike path anyway. We stopped occasionally for James to explain the history about this or that building or monument or to share some cultural tidbit with us about the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, languages, and so on. (James on several occasions said he had to cut himself short or we’d never get through the tour. He was a wealth of information.) I think pictures speak better, so I’ll interject here and there to explain what you’re looking at. Before the pictures, though, I will say that I could move to Palma in a heartbeat. It was probably my favorite city on the cruise, though it was not the only one that tempted me to relocate.
This is “James” holding up a picture of something or other. He had a lot of visual aids.
Part of Palma from the port.
The four pictures above are of the Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma. It’s the third largest cathedral in Europe, despite being on a fairly small island. According to James, it was built on such a grand scale as propaganda. It was meant to announce to the Moors, “This is a Catholic island, and we’re powerful enough to defend it.” We didn’t have time to go inside, but on a return trip….
This is a Bellver Castle on the opposite side of the bay in in the hills. It’s round, which is kinda cool, and the four tours mark the cardinal compass points. It was used as a prison for a great part of its history. James related that into one particularly infamous dungeon, “Olla,” or “the pot,” prisoners were thrown and left to die on the corpses and bones of the people who had been imprisoned there before them.
Some of our group.
Mark with is basket. Toto got away.
Looks a lot like the old cities of Barcelona and Florence, no?
These last three aren’t great photos, but I included them to show that Palma isn’t all cobble stones, ancient buildings, and narrow streets. There’s money here, so there are some really nice modern hotels, office buildings, and residences. They don’t seem to trade as much on their history as Florence, Naples, and Tivoli or even Barcelona.
We stopped at a working convent (with which I was a little uncomfortable—thirteen years of Catholic schools with nuns) where I mostly stayed in the courtyard. I think some of the others who went in were able to buy pastries made by the nuns. This was a little vignette that I thought was charming. I could have worked more on the composition, but I felt a little like I was invading someone’s privacy.
This was one of our last stops on the bike tour. This is a now-controversial statue of Junípero Serra outside the Basilica de Sant Francesc. Serra was canonized in 2015 despite protests that he was responsible for thousands of indigenous deaths and monumental damage to the cultures in what is now California, and some feel that a statue celebrating him—even though it far predates the canonization—is an unwelcome reminder of the paternalistic attitude of evangelists in the eighteenth century American west. Some also find the near nudity of the underage native, Serra’s hand on the boy, and the boy’s hand on Serra’s leg to be too evocative of the sexual-abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church—and, to be fair, other denominations—over the past decade.
I’m not sure how I feel about the controversies here. On the one hand, I think that it’s unfair to judge past cultures by ahistorical standards. On the other hand, some behaviors are just wrong, no matter the intention that drives the behavior. Well, let’s not get to into that. I could write a dissertation on my thoughts here, but there would be nothing that hasn’t already been wrestled over.
We finished up our tour of Palma with gelato (did I mention that I had ice cream five times on one day or that I’m in love with stracciatella gelato?). On our way back to the ship, we were chatting with some our fellow bicyclers, one of whom too this picture of Mark and me. Toward the end of the cruise, I was feeling daring enough to wear my shirts with two buttons undone. I don’t know what got into me.
Back on ship, we decided to take a few more turns on the waterslides (which you can see in some of the earlier posts). We had dinner at the Irish pub on board (which serves chicken wings and quesadillas! How is that Irish? LOL.) and spend an hour or so listening to some of the wide variety of live music available on the ship. We stopped in one of the lounges to talk for a bit with our new Irish friends, Gary and Owen, and then called it a night on our last day on ship.
In my next post, I’ll sum up the rest of the adventure, which includes the fabulous Hotel Barcelona 1882 (I hit it out of the park booking that hotel.), a day-trip to Sitges, our tour of Sagrada Familia, and our journey home.