9 May 2019 Mallorca Madness!

We are travelling again! Not perhaps quite like the epic trip down under, but still a little trip none the less.

Here I am in Mallorca with Geoff, David, Helen and Alex. More are due to join us tonight and tomorrow and we are here as support crew for Helen who is doing a half iron man on Saturday 😬 This involves a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile cycle ride and then a half marathon, 13.1 miles. Bonkers!!

We have rented a villa just outside Alcudia which is lovely. Views over the mountains, and arable land in the foreground. Geoff, David and Alex have tested the swimming pool. Think it was a little chilly as they didn’t stay in too long! But the sun is shining and it is comfortably warm.

However, let’s go back a stage. We drove to Gatwick yesterday evening only to discover that the French air traffic controllers had decided to call a strike for the next few days. Oh dear! So it was with a little trepidation that we went to check in this morning. The flight was still going, but was already an hour late. Thankfully we did get away and landed safely around 1.30 local time. Michael is due to fly out tonight and we have just heard that he is due in 2 hours late, at 1.30a.m. Ouch! Hopefully Julie and Andrew will be a bit luckier in the morning as their flight is an early one.

All together at Gatwick!

Having picked up the hire cars we then drove to Alcudia, not much more than half an hour away and had a very late lunch before locating our villa down a narrow lane. It was worth the bit of trouble it took to find it! We are already slipping into holiday mode, sitting peacefully in the sunshine with a cup of tea. We haven’t been shopping yet to get any coffee!!!

Having had lunch at 3.30 it was easy to eat later, in the Spanish style, although when we left the restaurant just before 10.00 there were still a lot of reserved tables, presumably for locals! We went to a restaurant called Cocodillo, a fish restaurant overlooking the bay with Pollenca in the distance. It was a lovely location, and whilst not being the cheapest of meals, it certainly was good. The food came in big portions so people like me regretted having a starter as I was unable to finish my main course of monk fish and tiger prawn skewers which were delicious. The staff were great fun, impressed with David’s Spanish and our attempts to learn a few words, plus our compliments about the food. We were given shots of some kind of coffee liqueur at the end, called piagra, or something that sounded like that. Geoff mentioned viagra which made us laugh, plus the waitress who commented that it was a universal word!!

The view from the restaurant

The evening finished with David and Alex heading for a bar to watch the second half of the Arsenal v Valencia match which Arsenal happily won. Also good news was that by 10pm Michael was on his way, the flight having been brought forward, to only an hour or so late, and him being entertained by a hen party and then police having to board the flight before it took off for some reason. Let’s hope the rest of the journey is more straight forward although we do have some concerns that if the taxi driver is not a good one they may have difficulty finding this place. Alex is on standby to be rung if there is a problem. Let’s hope he and David don’t celebrate too much!!