Portals Nous

(and my very infrequent appearance in a blip!).

A full day trip after the rain yesterday.  On the advice of Mr and Mrs Tickles, a trip to Portals Nous -  beautiful bay, expensive boats and a Marineland.

Marineland is overpriced, and limited in its entertainment (various fishy specimens in tanks), but it is spotless and there's a lovely splash pool for the wee ones to cool off while you wait for the main event.

The 'big picture' is an exhibition by the seals and dolphins.  The dolphins are particularly impressive, however after watching 'Black Fish' a few weeks ago, I'm always a bit suspicious.  Kids enjoyed it.

Took the wrong way home and ended up driving past the huge marina and Cathedral at Palma. Thousands of boats.

Polenca celebrates its vibrant past today.  By tradition on 2nd August the locals dress up either as fierce pirates or as townspeople in their white nightshirts to re-enact the battle between the pirate Moors and the Christians.  At 5am on 2nd Joan Mas jumps out of his bedroom window in his nightshirt and blows his bugle, waking the townspeople up to an invasion of pirates.  A fierce battle then occurs.  When we arrived this evening there were lots of adults and children still in their homemade costumes (and a fair few drunk Pirates!).  The Christians win the battle every year, but the Pirates get to leave their dirty mark on the cheeks of all the pretty girls they catch and kiss when they are running away.

There were a lot of dirty girls!  

Pheow.  Lucky escape for me, I would have HAD to fight them off, especially the young handsome ones.

Delicious chocolate churros in a messy bag to keep our strength up in the dark walk back while we tried to remember where we had parked the darned car!