A Mallorca scorcher
Palma is the hot capital boasting blissful beaches and awesome architecture
WITHIN 15 minutes of arriving in Palma, I find myself stumbling around the hotel room trying to pull on my bikini in a dash to get to the beach before sunset. My friend, meanwhile, calmly peruses her guide book and suggests we start with a gallery. And there you have the beauty of Mallorca’s capital: the best of both worlds. City break and beach holiday.
This means exciting exhibitions, theatre, concerts and shopping, and a ten-minute stroll to the Balearic Sea for a dip.
Most tourists devote no more to Palma than the few minutes it takes to board an airport transfer coach. But this historic, harbourside city is a destination in its own right.
It’s been spruced up in recent years, with a surge of boutique hotels and designer clothes stores. Swish yacht clubs dot the waterfront and bejewelled women cluster in the marina restaurants. It’s a real departure from Magaluf.
Poke around the old town’s tangle of narrow streets and you’ll find a Spanish city quietly confident in its heritage without the need to show off.
A modesty perhaps dating from the 13th century, when pirates landed and the wisest inhabitants would keep their treasures hidden.
It’s quirky, too: at once traditional and new, artistic and wacky. The legacy of previous tenants (Moors, Jews, Catalans, Castilians) can be seen in pretty mosaic stone courtyards, curly wroughtiron balconies, Arab bathhouses, Jewish pastries in bakery windows and churches.
Since painter, sculptor and ceramicist Joan Miro adopted Palma as his home town in 1956, there’s been a thriving contemporary art scene.
The mix is summed up in Palma’s architectural celebrity: the cathedral. Formerly a mosque, it presides by the sea, facing Mecca.
The interior is vast: a holy disco of multicoloured light splashes across the walls as the sun shines through giant stainedglass windows.
Antoni Gaudi designed the altar canopy, the Crown of Thorns, with lanterns dangling like scenery from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while local artist Barcelo installed a controversial artwork of toothy fish protruding from the walls to represent the multiplication of loaves and fishes.
The Mallorquins love their food. At the Olivar Market, goggle-eyed sea creatures glare up from beds of ice. The smell is intense, but doesn’t put off the locals on bar stools nearby tucking into calamari and champagne at 11am. Grab lunch at Es Rebost, for nutritious fast food with local ingredients (burger buns from the 100-yearold bakery round the corner and sobrassada sausage).
As for dinner, stave off hunger until 10 pm or you’ll get funny looks. Gaudeix, known as the ‘hidden’ tapas bar, is a lucky find ( we couldn’t locate it a second time, no matter how hard we tried). The owner Christina will ask: ‘ Would you like to see the menu or trust me?’
I’d trust her with my life after the marathon of Catalan dishes she rustles up. ‘We eat with our fingers!’ she barks, as we prod it with cutlery.
Nowhere is too far from Hotel Cort, opposite the mayor’s HQ, where you can sit and watch passing folk musicians.
The decor is a cool mismatch of styles — Parisian art deco, nautical and the telas de lenguas local fabric. After three nights, we drive West from Palma towards the Serra de Tramuntana mountains. After 20 minutes I feel as though I’m in another country.
Cyclists outnumber cars, the rolling fields are covered with almond, fig, carob and lemon trees, the air is fragrant and it is so, so quiet. This silence is what makes Castell Son Claret, a honey-coloured castle-cum-spa hotel, feel so special.
Sitting on the terrace you can hear an olive plop from a branch at the end of the garden. We spend the days loafing around the pool. Zaranda, the Michelin starred restaurant, serves us Heston style creations.
Spring is the ideal time to be in Mallorca. It’s comfortably warm and the almond blossom is spectacular. Hiking trails in the mountains are plentiful, but we only manage a pootle to the nearby greengrocer’s.
‘Mallorca has everything,’ the beaming shopkeeper tells us. He’s so right.