Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Day 3: Picture-Perfect Palma


We had another picture-perfect day in Palma, the capital city of Mallorca.  We had breakfast at Burger King again.  Gotta have my protein!  Then we got tickets for the Hop-On-Hop-Off tour bus.  This is a double-decker bus with a recording that describes all the sites.  You use ear buds to listen and it’s available in 10 languages.  There were 15 stops to choose from – you decide what sites you want to explore. We enjoyed the drive around the city, it's all gorgeous.

We went to Castell De Bellver first.  It was built in 1300, designed to be a royal residence.  In 1717 it became a military prison and in 1821 it was used as a mint.  It became a museum in 1931.  It’s very rare for a castle to be built in a circle.  Absolutely amazing.


I can hear my grand-daughter Caylin asking if Rapunzel lives here.


Imagine the labor involved in building this - it's round and gets narrower with each layer of stone.

The center courtyard was circular and so ornate.  We love "pozos" (wells).


The stones in these supports are pretty.

Then we went to the Cathedral and the Royal Palace.  We didn’t go inside either of them – they were really expensive and wouldn’t allow any photos to be taken inside.  We plan to return here, so we saved this for next time.  But I got a few good shots of the outside.  The Cathedral was designed by Gaudi in the Gothic style.  I’m sure it was impressive inside.

 It's massive!
This entrance was so tall I had to shoot it in two pictures.


The details...

This is the edge of the Royal Palace on the left.  That’s all I got of it.
And here’s our hotel:

Now for the bocadillo story - our experiment for the day.  Bruce checked every cafe for the best one at the best price.  We had looked at a lot of menus yesterday and he remembered seeing one in particular that he had decided on.  We had to walk all the way down the street looking at all the menus again until he found it.  But then we were confused again.  Some menus call them “baguettes”, some call them “bocadillos”, and some places list both sandwiches and bocadillos, but they all seem to describe the same thing.  First he thought bocadillos didn’t have lettuce, tomato, and mayo while sandwiches did.  But then we saw lots of them that did.  So to solve this riddle we went into the local Subway and asked them.  The lady told us that “bocadillo” is just the Spanish word for “sandwich” and it can have any amount of ingredients.  Sure enough, I Googled it when we got back.  The definition of a bocadillo is:  Sandwich on a baguette.  Pronunciation: bo-kah-dee-oh.  And here it is:


Mmmmm. Tasty!  For dessert we had a fruit tart.  I thought it was probably the least diet-damaging thing in the dessert window.

 Conclusion:  this town must’ve been established by college students!  The people here appear to live on pizza, sandwiches, and beer with lots of desserts.  Yet we haven’t seen ANY obese natives.  (Tourists – YES!).  So the locals must have the metabolism of a twenty-year-old to eat like this and remain slim.  Hence – they could only be college students.  LOL  (Except we haven’t seen any colleges, explain that!)

Another thing we learned – and this is for the men.  Bruce says if you’re less than 5’7” and/or have short legs, be careful how much you drink.  Input leads to output.  And you need to be tall and/or have long legs in order to successfully “output”.  Let’s just say that the “facilities” are up high.  Get it??  Fortunately, Bruce measures up.

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