Palma de Mallorca 2



Reading again my first article about Palma de Mallorca I can't help myself thinking that it is way to small, it contains very little information about one of the places in the world which i love the most. Since we travel there almost every year there are much more information that I would like to add and many more places that I visited on that island. Mallorca is so beautiful that any article written about it should start with "Once upon a time" just like a fairy tale. Palma de Mallorca is for me a fairy tale place. I spend my honeymoon there, our child was conceived there and some of the most pleasant vacations were spend there. Every year when the warm days of summer come we think of Mallorca and it is as if we can feel the sea breeze on our skin. I will write now about the places i most recommend when visiting Mallorca

CanPastilla

CanPastilla has probably the most beautiful beach I ever saw in my life and the little town is spread along the beach: hundreds of hotels and restaurants and here and there a little house or a block of flats. The CanPastilla beach is the most beautiful from my point of view. It is a very long beach full of golden sand, warm and fine sand and very, very long. You can walk for at least one hour along the beach and see hotel after hotel, restaurants and shops, palm trees and endless sea ad sand. Here and there there are umbrellas, usually made of straw which add a rustic feeling to the atmosphere. The water is perfectly clear when the wind is not blowing, you can see the bottom and millions of silver fish swimming around you. The water is always warm and pleasant. On windy days the waves rock you back to the shore.

 Beautiful waves
 Perfect beach
Clear water

Straw umbrellas on the beach
Each year we discover some other nice building or small house along the beach, a new restaurant or ice cream parlor, a shop with souvenirs. As you walk along the beach there are hotels after hotels, small or big, luxurious or simple. We like to walk there long and we like to buy souvenirs like t-shirts, cups, glasses, kitchen towels and sauce cups.

Hotels on the beach
Beautiful house on the beach
Hotels and palm trees on the beach

Little train

In the evening the sun sets in the sea and the golden light falls on the sand making it look golden red. Everything gets a beautiful color and it looks like in a fairy tale picture.

 Sunset
Sunset

In the night CanPastilla is full of little lights and shines with sparkle. The streets are busy until very late in the night and you an sand on the cold sand and watch the waves crash on the shore. There is also a small red bus going every hour which is going along the whole beach and back so you can admire it in peace without walking. 

CanPastilla in the night

The last thing that i would like to say about CanPastilla is about the main square and the Catholic Church of San Antonio de la Playa. I know this this small church can't compare with the Cathedral or other churches in bigger villages but it has become very dear to my heart. We go to the square every time we go to Palma and sit there on the bench until very late in the evening, we watch how the children play or we get the chance to see some small spectacle made by the inhabitants of CanPastilla. The church is very small and sweet and we went to mass there many a times. However when you go inside it is very spacious and the air inside is cool. The altar is very simple with a few stained glasses and a big cross hanging from the ceiling. There are statues all around and wooden benches, flower pots and palm trees. It is very quiet and pleasant in the church and it is a very nice place to pray.

San Antonio de la Playa
Statues around the church

The church inside

Palma city

I wrote a lot about the Palma Cathedral in another article of mine so i will not speak about it here but only about the city. Palma is a very large, pleasant city to leave in or to visit. There are a lot of people, shops and places to see. If we do not visit the Cathedral the bus usually stops in a beautiful square where there is an old interesting building which i found out it is called Fundacio La Caixa, it is now a gallery and used to be the Grand Hotel.Then we walk on large boulevards full of beautiful white buildings, shops and statues.

Fundacio de a Caixa

After that we enter the narrow and long streets of the old city which spreads like a web net. It is full of beautiful white and yellow houses with green or blue shudders and the same color of balconies. Sometimes beautiful flowers are hanging from the balconies and windows. Walking along the narrow streets you sometimes find some old building with beautiful decorations which looks like a work of art or a historical monument.

Typical buildings
 Narrow streets
Historical building
Mayor office
Beautiful buildings in Palma

There are beautiful churches here and there, so many and so beautiful. However we stop at a wonderful church in our way almost all the time: San Miquel Church. It is a relatively large church with a beautiful entrance door over which is the statue of Saint Miguel and a beautiful rose window. Small other statues and base-reliefs adorn the entrance door. When you enter inside the church is like entering another world, from the bright and noise world outside to a quiet and mild light inside. The church is simple with wooden benches and statues between pillars of stone. However there are 2 altars which are of unbelievable beauty. The main alter shines with golden decorations, there are statues and an amazing paintings on the ceiling representing heaven and angles and above all the Holly Spirit like a dove. The second smaller altar is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It is also beautiful with wonderful paintingsand a statue of the virgin in the middle. Here i offered a candle praying to have a child and my prayers were answered very fast.

Facade of the church
Main altar
Altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary
Walking the narrow streets of the old town you reach the main square of Place Mayor. The square is very large, invaded by warm and bright light, surrounded by old yellow buildings with green shudders. There are many souvenir shops, restaurants and street performers. It is a very busy place full of tourists and sometimes of a open market where local goods are sold.

Main square
Main square

Another beautiful thing to see in Palma city is the Ramblas walk from the intersection of Calle de los Olmos , Via Roma to Calle Baron Pinopar. it is a long and wide road in the middle of the city shaded from the hot Balearic sun by huge and imposing trees. Guarded on both sides by old historical buildings it is a very nice place for a romantic walk and rest on stone benches. In the middle of the street you can see many shops with flowers, books or other useful objects.Somewhere along this way there another beautiful church called Santa Tereza of the sundial. It is so named because on the facade of the church there is a sundial showing the time.


 Ramblas
Ramblas
Santa Tereza of the Sundial
One of the largest squares in Palma is the Plaza of Spain where a statue of James I the Conqueror. This is in my opinion more imposing and beautiful square then the Playa Mayor. There are statues and imposing bank buildings around, many shops and restaurant, the train station is close by and also the historical train station Feroccaril de Soller.

Plaza of Spain

The last thing i want to say about Palma city is about the sweet shops. The cakes and pastry are wonderful here, they invite you and the shops are wonderfully decorated.


Strawberry tart in Palma

Sweet shop in Palma
Coffee cake in Palma
Sweet shop in Palma

 Ice-cream in Palma

Inca

Inca is one of the biggest cities in the island of Mallorca. It can be easily reached by train on every Thursday it contains the biggest open market place in the island. The main street are filled with stalls which contains a lot of leather objects since the city is famous for the leather business. There are also clothes, wooden object, fresh products and many souvenirs.

Inca train station

 Open market in the main street in Inca


Leather products in Inca

Restaurants in Inca

The main street is full of old beautiful buildings and the main square Placa D'espagna reminds me of the Placa Mayor in Palma. It is also large and surrounded by old buildings with green shudders. However in this square there is a fountain and an amazing old church called Santa Maria Mayor. There is also a very old and nice cafe called Cafe Matias which serves coffees and the traditional Spanish paella.

 Main square


Cafe Matias

From the outside the church in the center looks very plane, the facade and the tower are very simple. However when entering you discover a Baroque masterpiece. The mail altar is impressively decorated in the baroque style. There is a statue of the Virgin Mary in the middle over the tabernacle, also a painting of God and Jesus. Along the church there are smaller altarpieces but also unbelievable beautiful in baroque style with paintings and statues. On the walls there are wonderful painting and the stained windows are simple representing saints. At the entrance in the church there is also a statue of a dead Virgin Mary.

Santa Maria Mayor

 Altars
Main Altar

Palma Aquarium

We have discovered the Palma Aquarium in our last trip to Mallorca and to our surprise it was very close to our hotel and our hotel was offering a family discount on the visit. The Palma Aquarium looks like a huge very simple building from the outside but when you enter oh what a rainbow of colors and shapes. I have seen fish and animals i have never imagined in all my life. The Aquarium is split in 3 pavilions: an exposition of fish based on different regions of the earth: Mediterranean, Caribbean, Indian ocean, tropical etc. The second pavilion is the Tropical Paradise and the last The Big Blue.

Palma Aquarium
 Map of the Aquarium

We entered the Pama Aquarium and directly into the fish exhibition. The number and color and shapes of the fishes are amazing. There wee blue fish, orange fish, yellow, green and black, flat fish or round fish, short or long, sea horses, and many many other sea animals ad plants forming a wonderful spectacle of color.

Hello
Finding Nemo
Sea Horses
Tropical fish

From the first pavilion you go out into a spacious open air square where you can find a restaurant a theme playground for the children and a garden. The restaurant is modern and offers a lot of fish dishes, drinks and deserts which you can have on a spacious terrace. The playground for children is in the shape of a pirate ship and there are plastic fish and sea creatures around it. There is also a small pond full of colorful fish which they can touch and feed.

 Restaurant
Pond
 Playground
The gardens are wonderful, full of trees, flowers and here and there some pool of water where you can watch different type of fish. Then we entered the second pavilion, the Jungle, where they tried to imitate the jungle. Luxuriant plants and trees, a small waterfall, parrot sounds and humid air make you feel as if you were in the tropics.


Jungle
 
After this small trip i the jungle we go inside the last pavilion, the Big Blue. The Big Blue is the biggest tank of sea water in the whole Europe filled with many different type of animals and fish that live at the bottom of the sea. You can sit in front of the tank and admire the marine life for hours. It is probably one of the most impressive spectacle i ever saw in my life. Sharks and huge stingrays, bigger silver fish then i ever saw in my entire life simply flowing in front of me, around me and above my head. I was there face to face with the sharks and the the biggest stingray imaginable flew by above my head in the tank. At a certain hour a diver appeared in the tank feeding the fish and millions of fish appeared out of nowhere creating whole silver crowd.

Meeting the shark

Shark



-
 Feeding the fish

 Stingray

When we were finally able to move from the Big Blue, the final stop was a tank full of jelly fish floating delicately and graciously and illuminated with fluorescent light. An amazing spectacle. We came out in a souvenir shop which i didn't like very much full of fish cups and fish glasses and fish everything. So we went out of the Aquarium with the beautiful impressions from the the Big Blue.

Jelly fish

Now at the end of the article i can only say Palma de Mallorca has become our favorite   vacation destination. I do not wonder if in a few years i will not have to write a Palma 3.Who know what other beautiful, amazing things we will not find on our next trips there. 












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