Mallorca and the Mediterannean

Sydney to Palma, Mallorca

Mallorca is an island between the coasts of Spain and Africa, in the Mediterranean Sea.  It's the biggest of a whole group of islands called the Balearics.  After I went through Customs and Immigration (whenever you leave one country and enter another one you have to have your passport stamped and they ask you what you're bringing into the country), Belén met me at the airport.  Belén is absolutely awesome; she let me ride on the railing all the way down the moving sidewalk in the airport.  I made this video so you could feel what it was like.


The famous sign marking the city of Palma

The very first stamp in my passport!


You would not believe the difference between the climate in Cape Breton and the climate here.  The airport was air-conditioned, but once we went outside the air was warm and summery, and palm trees were growing across the street.  I packed away my hat and mittens and parka, and dug out my summer clothes.  The smell of the sea was everywhere, just the way it is at Sydney ... but this was a warm, gentle Mediterranean breeze, not the icy jabs of the wind off the North Atlantic.  Every now and then I'd catch a whiff of chocolate and almonds - the smells of Mallorca at Christmas time.






Belén took me shopping for groceries first.  She loves cooking, and takes extra time to arrange the food before serving so that it looks like something you'd see in a magazine.  She asked me to choose what I like best to eat.  Because she's a vegan (that means she doesn't eat meat or anything made from animal products, like cheese or yoghurt), I only chose food that we could eat together.  I'd never seen purple carrots before, so I picked those out right away.

Shopping for groceries.  Look at the purple carrots!



Belén bought a bunch of fresh spinach and asked me to carry it.  I don't like spinach, but I didn't want to be rude.  Then she explained that the spinach was for some friends of hers.  Whew!  The friends turned out to be a pair of swans at a nearby pond.  People bring them stale bread (as long as it isn't mouldy, because mouldy bread can poison swans), but what the swans really like is spinach!  I had no idea.  They ate all the spinach right away, and then swam off to have a word with a little boy about the cookies in his hand.



Feeding the swans

I had to take my shoes off for this photo!





We came home along the harbour, past miles and miles of fishing nets spread out to dry in the sun.  Those nets didn't come from a hardware store; the fishermen buy the twine and make their own nets by hand.  I could smell fish and dry leaves.  It looks quiet in this photo, but you could hear the distant traffic, the wind in the palms, the little waves lapping against the hulls of all the boats, and all sorts of little tapping noises as the boats rocked in the harbour.  I wanted to go on one of the boats, but Belén didn't know any of the fishermen and I was too shy to just go and ask somebody.

 


My feet were tired by the time we got home.  Belén had arranged for two friends of hers to meet me.  Snowmen!  They were just the same size as the snowman I had made back in Nadine's back yard.  Do you see the little poinsettia in the picture?  She put the snowmen there to remind me of where I'd come from, and the poinsettia there to remind me of where we're going - to Mexico, which is where poinsettias come from.  She says that they grow wild in the mountains.






Going to bed with Noa.

For me, the best part of staying with Bé was meeting her friend, Noa the cat.  Noa spends at least an hour a day keeping her fur pure white, and when she's curled up asleep she looks like a snowdrift.  Belén had made up a bed for me in the guest room, but I wanted to sleep with Noa instead.  She is soft and warm, and when she purrs me to sleep I'm never scared of the dark.


Belén's father belongs to Noa.  One day he went to the lumber yard where she lived, and Noa made an enormous fuss over him.  She rubbed against him, and purred, and leaped onto his lap as soon as he sat down.  The owners of the lumber yard offered to let him take Noa home with him.  At first he didn't think that they really meant it, but finally they convinced him to take her.  By then, Noa had disappeared.  Belén's dad and the lumberyard people looked everywhere for her, but she had vanished.  Sadly, Belén's father opened his car door to drive home - and there was Noa, curled up in the back.  She'd already decided to go home with him, and jumped into the open window.  Since Noa already has a special person, I thought it was really generous of her to let me sleep with her at night.

That reminds me, it's bedtime.  I'm tired, and Christmas is nearly here.  I have to get my beauty sleep!

The Plaza of Palma, all decorated for Christmas.