Palma de Mallorca

Belated backblipping as the camera stopped playing ball with the iPad for no apparent reason. 

This was Monday ... we'd arranged with C when we had dinner with him that he would come and give us a personal guided tour of Palma. I'm sure we got a better tour than the masses of cruise ship groups. The area immediately around our apartment was absolutely heaving with tourists by mid-morning. But C took us to parts of the old town we'd never have found on our own, which were almost deserted, while he told us about the rich history of Mallorca from Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans to Arabs and Jews. And finally the Christians in 1229, who did their best to eradicate traces of preceding cultures. We also learned about the shenanigans of a local celebrity who got rich doing dodgy deals with both sides in both world wars, including delivering suitcases of cash to Franco from MI6. I bet the cruise tours didn't get that.

There's some magnificent architecture to admire (here and here for example), much of it hard to photograph because the streets are so narrow. We couldn't cover it all, but we did our best in three hours of walking before following C to his selected restaurant for lunch.

A restaurant at the bus station doesn't sound promising, but C is a regular there and it was excellent, housed in the attractively converted old station of the now defunct railway between Palma and Inca. We had a leisurely meal before releasing C to return to his house-moving activities.

We were all  fit only to return to the apartment and crash, but later S and I revived enough to walk the short distance to the Arab baths and sit in the lovely garden for a while. We bought a bottle of excellent Mallorcan wine on the way back, and spent our last evening relaxing over tapas and wine in the apartment.

Now I'm home I've started a small Mallorca album, to be continued.