Back to Majorca! We came here 15 years ago, for Cate's first foreign holiday. How has it changed? Do we want to do the same things? How will the hotel be different?
After a search and trying out some different options, we went with Jet2 for the first time, and found a hotel just outside Porto Cristo, called Castell del Hams (more on the name later). It looked good, was reasonably priced and the English reviews on Tripadvisor complained that it was mostly French tourists that stayed there. So what's not to like? Well, it turns out the French are all still heavy smokers, but apart from that...
We flew out on a Monday, coming back a week next Saturday, and the travel arrangement all went smoothly. The transfer time was listed as 2 hours but turned out to be 45 minutes as we were the first stop (and the last on the way back) so that was a bonus.
The hotel is quite an old building, with more modern extensions. It has two wings plus a number of external rooms (bungalows on the web site) which we had one of for the stay. Plenty of swimming options with three decent pools and a kiddies one. Our preferred place for loungers was at the first pool, under the trees where we had shade most of the day. It was surprisingly easy to get loungers without the mad morning rush we've seen elsewehere, maybe the French are more relaxed.
And it was mostly French tourists there. However the staff spoke French and English and we never had any language problems throughout the stay. They had lots of activities through the day (always petanque at 3 though) and a show at 9.30pm, which was always well attended. Also, someone had taught the French folk the Slosh, so it was like a home from home.
Food was decent, not up to Marylanza standards but plenty of seafood and other meats; not too much in the way of accompaniments though. There was also a pool bar for drinks through the day and burgers pre-lunch, with biscuits and so on available most of the day.
The hotel is about a mile outside the town of Porto Cristo, so you can't just go for a walk around town of an evening, but there is a free minibus that takes you into the town and returns back to the hotel. The tickets for the various times get put out at 8pm each evening and you grab tickets for the times that suit you best.
On our second day we got the bus into Porto Cristo. There wasn't too much to do there after an initial look around: the beach was already packed and the shops were just the usual cafes, supermarkets and so on. There was a nice town square though, with a big Porto Cristo sign, and various knitted artworks. Some of the trees were outfitted with knitted octopus jumpers for some reason.
We spotted Rafa Nadal's big yacht, got Cate some cream for insect bites, and took the bus back to the hotel again.
The hotel is actually named after the caves discovered nearby. Hams is Spanish for fish hooks, and the bloke that discovered the caves found that some had unusual shapes, like fish hooks, so named them the fish hook caves. That explained the big fish hook set into the flooring in the hotel reception.
The caves are a 5 minute walk from the hotel, and they also have an area called Dinosaurland, so we booked up dual tickets and walked on down. It was very quiet when we visited so not too crowded when viewing the caves. There are more well known caves in Porto Cristo (the dragon caves, Cuevas del Drach), but we couldn't book a hotel right next to the Hams caves and not visit them.
The trip through the caves was very good. There were a good number of lit-up sections to view, plus a couple of videos to watch, and a audio-visual presentation in the lowest cave with a big pool in it. It was nice and cool too after the 30 degree heat of outdoors.
The Dinosaurland exhibit is obviously aimed at kids, but was just 6 euros on top of the caves ticket, so we took a look. They had 40 different dinosaurs, some of them animated and with sound effects too. They are all life sized, so you get a good idea of the scale of these creatures. Titanosaur was particularly impressive.
We stopped for ice lollies at the Dinoburger cafe after this, before heading back to the hotel. The whole setup was quite impressive, and must get busier later on in the season, but it was nice and quiet while we were there.
After a few days lazing by the pool, we booked up a hire car for 4 days from a local place, Kurt Rentals. Unusually everything is included in the price, so there was no attempt to sell us extra insurance, and the prices were decent too. We had a nearly new Focus, which did us well touring the island.
On our first day we drove to Cala Mondrago, a nice beach near a nature reserve. In fact it is two beaches, and you can walk round to the other beach in a couple of minutes. There were some boats sitting just offshore, and I think this might be the place where the boats look like they're floating in mid-air if the water is calm. It was packed by the time we got there so we couldn't get any loungers, and had to settle for the sand. Claire went to sleep in a shady bit, but by the time she got up the sun had moved and she got a bit of a bad burn. Cate and I swam out from the beach and round the corner to the other beach. The water was lovely here, but see the next beach we went to...
The last time we came we stayed at Port de Pollensa, on the north coast of the island, and visited the town of Pollensa on a bus trip. The second day we had the car was market day in Pollensa, so we drove across for a visit. We found a few places that we remembered from our previous visit, bought some lovely cherries from the market, and decided not to climb the 365 Calvary Steps this time.
We followed this up by visiting Port de Pollensa again, and walked along the front. There are still the fancy sandcastles being built there, and we found the Agate shop again, but were much disappointed that the Monkey Shop was no longer there. We had lunch in a wee bar, walked about and then headed back.
It's probably worth saying that the roads were all pretty good in Majorca. The signs are easy enough to understand, and SatNav helped, and it was relatively painless driving about, even if we were on the wrong side of the road and the roundabouts go the wrong way. The one tricky bit was going through Palma, when it got pretty busy and complicated.
Next day we planned to get up early (for Cate) and go to another beach, hopefully to get loungers this time. We drove to Cala Agulla, and managed, but only just: the beach was pretty busy even at 10:30. This beach has blue flag awards for water quality (hello UK!) and sure enough the water was crystal clear. The beach was a gentle slope, but even when you are well past standing depth, you can still see the bottom clearly. We had a great time swimming about here for a while. The only down side for this trip was spending 10 minutes trying to find the car in the car park when we left.
If there are animals to see, Cate is for it, even at 18. So we booked up a visit to Marineland. It's a small place between Palma and Magaluf, with a fairly limited number of fish, penguins and reptiles to view, but it did have an excellent dolphin show.
The place had a car park, but I missed it, and ended up parked on a hill about 7 minutes walk away. 7 minutes is hard work in the baking sun though. So we enjoyed the AC in the car on the way back. I'd brought a USB stick with lots of songs on it, so we got to enjoy our own music while in the car.
For the last evening we had the car we looked for somewhere nearby to visit at sunset. There was a tower in Porto Cristo, called Torre Serral Dels Falcons, out on a jutting headland, so we visited there for a walk about. Nadal has built himself a big house nearby, but we didn't try knocking on his door to see if he wanted to come out and play.
I took the car back the next morning, and that was the end of our excursions. We spent the last 3 days in the hotel, lying by the pool, reading, and playing table tennis. The hotel has loads of space inside that wasn't being used at all, including an indoor theatre that presumably gets used in dodgy weather.
Talking of weather, we had sunshine every day, with only the occasional overcast spell. We did get one shower, which only lasted 5 minutes, and everyone else ran for cover while we just waited it out. On the day we left it was a bit rainy, which actually helped as we were changed back into our Scottish clothes. And sure enough on landing in Glasgow we were treated to a blustery downpour.
We enjoyed our trip to Majorca. I'd happily stay in the hotel again, though without the hire car for part of the stay I think we'd have felt a bit trapped. It was good to be back in a place with a pool though. Despite the all-inclusive feasts every day I came back 4 pounds lighter.
