Nicnjules on the Road: August 2009

After the wedding, Nick and I headed to London to spend a few days with Leigh and Nigel. London was, as always, great fun. We decided to visit an exhibition in Tower Bridge since neither of us had ever explored the inside of it before, and we spent a lovely, mellow afternoon wandering down by the Thames, soaking up the history and the sights and enjoying the social aspects of a warm spring afternoon on one of the worlds most famous riverbanks.

From London we moved on to Spain. Spain has always been one of my favourite places to be and we were looking forward with excited anticipation (read barely containable!) to exploring an area of the country that we had never been to before: Mallorca. We had decided to fly out a few days before the rest of the family to explore Palma and see if it was somewhere we would be interested in living in the future. YES! Was the resounding answer!

We flew into Palma in the late afternoon and jumped on a bus to the center. Traveling is thirsty business, so when the first thing we saw in the main Plaza was a bar that sold Cruzcampo on tap, we couldn't resist! Beer and tapas as soon as we arrive...what better way to start a trip to Spain!

For the uninitiated, Cruzcampo was my beverage of choice when I lived in Sevilla and it brings back many happy memories! Most vividly, litrones of Cruzcampo to start the weekend from the little

shop across the way on Friday afternoons when I lived on Penaflor with Elena!

Duly satiated, we headed for our home away from home in Palma; Hostal Brondo. It was clean, central, atmospheric and friendly. A great place to be based from. We had a lovely (and very pink) room with a large traditional veranda/balcony overlooking the street. We were shown to our room and probably less than 20 minutes later we were back outside again and ready to explore.

Anyone who has traveled with me knows that I cannot sit and relax when there are places to be explored, foods to be tasted, wines to be tested, sights to be seen, pavements to be pounded, plazas to be sat in and photos to be taken. Nick, bless him, deals with my desperation to just "be out there" with equanimity every time. I don't know how he puts up
with me!

We spent the next 7 or 8 hours out

and about exploring plazas and passage ways, tasting local foods and wines and getting completely lost! Everything we love to do the first time in a place! It was only the next day when we were walking a long way from our home base in search of another area of town that we realized how far we had roamed the night before. I just finished reading "The Road to

Garbadale" by Iain Banks: the main character and a cousin get com

completely messed up in Singapore and then spend hours (or even days) trying to figure out where they are staying... fairly unsuccessfully! We were much the same. How we ever found our way back I will never know. We must have circumvented the place a dozen times but not realized it was down that specific small passage way.... it took us days to get our bearings in the back streets. What a perfect start to the vacation! Next time we will have to take the hotel name and address with us!

The next few days were spent exploring Palma, getting re acquainted with Spanish food and discovering the local specialties.

After a

few days in Palma, we met up with Mum and Dad, Steve, Sarah, Bella and Libby. We had all rented a villa up near the North West coast in Pollenca for two weeks. The place was a few km out of Pollenca and close to Puerta Pollenca. We arrived tired and a little grumpy late on Saturday night but immediately fell in love with the place. It was a large 4 bed-roomed villa with a beautiful veranda along the whole ground floor of the house. There was a pool and gardens, a large barbecue area, a separate laundry and a gated driveway - just lovely.