Balearic Adventures

This morning I used Google Translate to figure out how to say in Spanish, “My car has broken down. I will move it from this spot tomorrow.”

But let me backtrack.

We arrived on Mallorca on Wednesday after traveling on EasyJet, RyanAir’s big brother. We had twice as much baggage as we were allowed, having not read the (very) small print, but when we pleaded ignorance the attendant took pity on us and let us on.  We got lost only twice on the way

from the Palma airport to Fornalutx (the /tx/ makes the sound of ch, for those of you who’ve written phonics), a beautiful, remote little village up in the mountains, about 5 kilometers from the sea. The house is glorious, all stone and dark wood, scented with the rosemary and sage plants that grow in profusion in the garden.  There are three levels, with steep stone steps between, and the house itself is a long way up an almost vertical road that we did not assay with our little standard-shift car. Instead, we parked and pulled our numerous suitcases the quarter mile up the cobblestones, our exercise for the day.

We settled in and had a traditional meal  (including sucking pig and octopus) in a restaurant near the square, where everyone in the village gathers in the evening to drink and talk and, in the case of the slightly scrofulous dogs, jump into the fountain to relieve the itching.

In the late morning, we walked down to the car to discover our first parking ticket. 

After a certain amount of profane despair, we spent the rest of the day quietly, shopping in the square (Klauser and Sue), working on copyedits (me), hiking up a mountain (Phil and BT), and reading Robert Graves (Phil and Klauser).  It was quite hot out, but the breeze and the fans and the spectacular setting made up for the temperature. Phil cooked a fabulous paella and we began our nightly ritual of aperitifs and/or ice cream in the square.

On Friday, we set out along winding mountain roads and through a long tunnel to the Jardines des Alfabia, an garden based on a 16^th century Arab model, featuring fish-filled pools and fountains, flowers, shaded paths, and friendly goats. Then it was on to Port Soller, a seaside town with a grand promenade. We had tapas, and all of us but Klauser (who watched our clothes and drank coffee) swam in the gentle Mediterranean, along with many, many other bathers, some semi-clothed.

It was in Port Soller that we got our second parking ticket.

Saturday was another hot, quiet day of hiking and copyedits. In the early evening we went to the square and had Campari and sodas in honor of Klauser’s father, who used to spend his afternoons in the exact spot where we sat, sipping the same drink. Phil cooked an excellent meal of grilled meats, made all the more challenging because there was no real charcoal. But he managed to get a fire going in the grill with dried wood and used the paella pan to turn out perfect sausages and burgers, accompanied by Sue’s delicious barbecue sauce. We watched
Rules of the Game before lapsing into exhausted unconsciousness.
 

There were no parking tickets on Saturday whatsoever.

Sunday was exceedingly busy.  We drove into Soller and parked worriedly, then walked through town, where a fair was going on. Booths selling all sorts of flotsam lined the streets, and a chess tournament was taking place in front of the cathedral. We took an antique wooden train through the mountains to Palma, the capital, past towering cliffsides and lemon, olive, and fig groves so close to the train window that we could have plucked the fruit if we’d dared.

In Palma, we grabbed a taxi and went up to the Belver Castle, a thirteen-century edifice with two different concentric tiers in the middle surrounded by towers. It’s incredibly well-preserved, intended for defense but used as first a palace and then a prison. Now it's a museum holding statuary and paintings from various eras, including a remarkable third-century alabaster Hermaphrodite Sleeping. Klauser and Phil were nearly overwhelmed by the classical statuary.

After walking a quite long way under quite a hot sun (did I mention it was extremely warm in Mallorca?), we found another taxi to take us to the ancient Arab Baths, used of course only by men (one towel covered the head, we learned, and one covered the loins). Then we separated. Phil, BT, and I went to see the cathedral of Santa Maria, the second-largest Gothic cathedral in the world (if anyone knows the largest, please tell us), which to our great pleasure was open to visitors. Klauser and Sue strolled back to the train.

We met at the station, and managed to sit in the first-class cabin, which had padded leather seats. There, Klauser and Sue surprised us with tasty local snacks and champagne. When Phil pulled off the metal fastening of the bottle, the cork exploded with a noise like gunfire, and half the contents ended up in his lap. We enjoyed the remains, eating and drinking as the sun set pink across the mountains, but the surly Spaniard sharing the cabin with us was not amused.

It was nearly dark when we picked up the car in Soller (no ticket!), but we made it back to Fornaluxt quickly. Sadly, the free parking area we had found had no spaces, and by the time we realized this, Phil had driven up a steep hillside so far that the road had become a mere path, with short gnarled trees pressing close on either side. 

We left part of the car on one of the trees, and left the car itself at the top of the path as it smoked gently in a way that let us know it did not want to go any further. And in the morning, before I settled down to finish my manuscript and after the others had set off on foot to Port Soller to swim and eat black paella, I went down to the café in the square. There I used Google Translate to compose a note that I could leave in the window of the poor gouged car to forestall a third parking ticket:

“My car has broken down. I will move it from this spot tomorrow.”