Amazing Places - Mallorca, Spain

Following tradition, we made another trip to Mallorca for the 4th of July. The last time we went was in in 2008 when I was pregnant with Cooper. This time, it was a really last minute trip that we decided on basically the night before we left, based on flights out of Nuremberg the next day. Nothing like living spontaneously!   Frank and I found a great deal with Air Berlin so we booked it. The hardest part was finding a good place to stay (I stayed up till 1am booking an apartment and a rental car).

Luckily, it turned out it was worth the trouble because the place I found ended up being totally amazing and I won't be staying anywhere else the next time we go back. We were at the Agriturismo Ses Rotetes near Porto Cristo. Nestled in the hills west of the popular tourist town of Porto Cristo (an amazing deep water soloing locale) Ses Rotetes lies on a farm/orchard of sorts surrounded by fields of olive trees with goats and sheep, with its own orchard of oranges, plums, lemons, and an extensive garden of tomatoes, onions and herb surrounding the villa. We booked the 3 bedroom apartment since there were six of us (we traveled with our two friends Eric and Dave), which was very spacious and beautifully decorated.  


The front of our apartment

The back terrace of the apartment that faces the olive grove and orchard

I love this tree. Perfect spot we hung out each morning and night with lights for nighttime.

Onions in the Garden

Eric spent each morning picking snacks for the day

Fruits and Veggies from the garden

The highlights of the agriturismo were the beautiful grounds and convenience. All the trees were bursting with fruit that was perfectly ripe and the apartment came with a stocked kitchen, two full baths, baby bed, tennis court and a swimming pool. And another little amenity which they leave out on their website is that there are tortoises all over the place! Haha! When we arrived, our wonderful host was showing Frank around the house and grounds and she said, "and for the kids, we have the tortoises"... too funny. Sure enough, they were everywhere. I thought the owners purchased the tortoises at first, until one day we found no less than 16 of them eating plums in the morning by our car. Turns out, they are endemic to the islands and love the orchard. We also had our best meal of the trip at the agriturismo eating Tumbet Mallorcan, an amazing local eggplant dish with lamb, fresh olives, and wine right from their own stock. Topped off by Mallorcan almond ice cream and Spanish champagne. YUM! One of the best meals I've ever had...

Lily making a mess with oranges

Awesome pool at Ses Rotetes. I had to add some shorts to Cooper ;)

His face when I told him we couldn't bring them home with us.

Our awesome Mallorcan meal at the agriturismo

For climbers, Mallorca is extremely well known and popular due to Chris Sharma's crazy send of Es Pontas  and the movie King Lines. It has amazing cliffs on land and all along the sea. In the past, I always deep water soloed with Frank, but this time since he had Dave and Eric to climb with, I mostly stayed back at the beach and played with the kids. It really isn't my thing, deep water soloing. I get scared I'll fall wrong into the water and it will hurt. Plus its hard because your hands are all wet and you don't feel like you can grip or climb near as strong as you can on land. That, and I get creeped out about jelly fish. Basically, I'm a wimp. Yup. But it is one of Frank's favorite things to do! He loves the ocean and swimming and the amazing rock and the the total freedom of climbing in such a wild way. So the guys would go out and do that for a few hours while I mostly played on the beach with my little ones which was wonderful as well. Both were so content for hours. The only downside was getting used to the sand with Lily! The water diapers are no good on the beach. They just rub the sand in and she had the worst diaper rash ever! So, I let her go naked most of the days. Most of the adults were anyhow...

 

Cooper out with the boys deep water soloing

Eric with Cooper at the amazing Cala Varquez

The kids and I in front of the iconic Es Pontas

The only hitch to our travel arrangements was our flight didn't leave until 22:00 which is kind of how we wanted it so we had another full day to play around, but that is REALLY late for my children who we keep on a pretty tight sleep schedule, as you know. So after playing at the beach and in the water the entire rest of the time, we decided to use our last day to do other more touristy things. We visited Cala Millor, had a nice lunch by the beach, visited Es Pontas, and then headed to beautiful Palma (the capital of Mallorca) for a little sight seeing. The perfect end to a wonderful trip.

 

We were all tempted to never leave the island and skip our flight, but sadly rationale kicked in as it always does...

 

 

 

Slurping up the remains of a banana split

Cooper in awe of the strange sea creatures for sale

 

 

Oh how I love living in Europe!