Beware the picspam!
Apr. 12th, 2013 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckSo, we - true to form - booked a last-minute holiday on Gründonnerstag, Green Thursday, the day before Good Friday, to leave for Mallorca very early on Easter Sunday returning one week later late on Sunday night. Those were the only flights available and while they made travelling a little less convenient it gave us an extra 12 hours of actual holiday time.
Mallorca is a place that is known for several things: partying, sangria and being Germany's 17th state. It also has the reputation of being stunningly beautiful if you actually make the effort and know where to look.
Our hotel/apartment was in Party Central, with a view of one of the more famous beerhalls. Thankfully the party crowd was still small, but I must say Playa de Palma is one scary place: A mix of tacky and tasteless, it has table dancing bars, more German restaurants than the average German smalltown and you can buy wacky penis-shaped bottle openers in stalls everywhere. The famous Ballermann 6 is still there, but it has been toned down somewhat, it's smaller than it used to be I was told - the name comes from drunk Germans mispronouncing balneario (beach bar) of which there are several along the long beach between S'Arenal and Can Pastilla. We did see only a few people buying sangria by the bucketload - literally - and drinking it from metre-long straws (made by putting the smaller ones together) - which is the stereotypical thing to do. Yep, you can buy a bucket full of beer or a bucket full of vodka tonic or a bucket full of sangria and then you get drunk on the beach. With the young boozehounds largely absent - they tend to avoid the Easter holidays, because they're more expensive - it was mostly seniors and some families walking up and down the promenade. At this time of the year it was actually very restful. Well, apart from the young Germans standing on the street and desperately trying to get you to go to that one great bar/restaurant/café where you would get free booze/schnitzel/German cake who were competing for your attention with the friendly African street vendors with the knock-off watches and sunglasses.
Why go there you may ask? Well, with kid in tow we wanted somewhere close to the airport to minimize travel times, a place where you could just hop on a bus and be in Palma in less than 30 minutes and somewhere with a choice of restaurants, facilities and all that. It was perfect! Several nice playgrounds where the kid made friends quickly plus that very big beach. And truth be told? We just wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny.
When we saw this, we knew we'd come to the right place:
Mallorca is a place that is known for several things: partying, sangria and being Germany's 17th state. It also has the reputation of being stunningly beautiful if you actually make the effort and know where to look.
Our hotel/apartment was in Party Central, with a view of one of the more famous beerhalls. Thankfully the party crowd was still small, but I must say Playa de Palma is one scary place: A mix of tacky and tasteless, it has table dancing bars, more German restaurants than the average German smalltown and you can buy wacky penis-shaped bottle openers in stalls everywhere. The famous Ballermann 6 is still there, but it has been toned down somewhat, it's smaller than it used to be I was told - the name comes from drunk Germans mispronouncing balneario (beach bar) of which there are several along the long beach between S'Arenal and Can Pastilla. We did see only a few people buying sangria by the bucketload - literally - and drinking it from metre-long straws (made by putting the smaller ones together) - which is the stereotypical thing to do. Yep, you can buy a bucket full of beer or a bucket full of vodka tonic or a bucket full of sangria and then you get drunk on the beach. With the young boozehounds largely absent - they tend to avoid the Easter holidays, because they're more expensive - it was mostly seniors and some families walking up and down the promenade. At this time of the year it was actually very restful. Well, apart from the young Germans standing on the street and desperately trying to get you to go to that one great bar/restaurant/café where you would get free booze/schnitzel/German cake who were competing for your attention with the friendly African street vendors with the knock-off watches and sunglasses.
Why go there you may ask? Well, with kid in tow we wanted somewhere close to the airport to minimize travel times, a place where you could just hop on a bus and be in Palma in less than 30 minutes and somewhere with a choice of restaurants, facilities and all that. It was perfect! Several nice playgrounds where the kid made friends quickly plus that very big beach. And truth be told? We just wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny.
When we saw this, we knew we'd come to the right place:
