Welcome to our Mallorca travel blog. We spent a glorious week on this Spanish Balearic Island from December 9-16, 2006. This trip was a celebration for my husband's graduation for a doctorate in May, and a promotion in June. We like cruises. Located in Germany, we looked for cruises and found very few in the Mediterranean in the winter. Instead, we found an all-inclusive resort deal here in Mallorca.For family and friends in the US, a lot of this information is for our co-workers in Germany, interested in a similar trip. This is a logistics heavy blog.
We went to our travel office. They booked this 7 day trip for us through the German travel agency, TUI. For less than 500 euro a person, we received airfare, 7 nights in a "4 star" hotel that included entertainment located a block from the beach, 3 meals a day and unlimited drinks. We think it was a great deal! Note that right before Christmas is one of the cheapest times of the year there, and lots of stuff is closed on the beach during that time.
http://www.world-of-tui.com/de/ The TUI website is in German if you want to look at packages flying out of Germany. We flew out of Cologne. You can go out of Frankfurt or a host of other cities in Germany. The parking in Cologne was 40 Euro for the week. It is more expensive to park in Frankfurt. Also, the package included taking the train from our region to Cologne, transferring to the airport bound train. We would have done this, except that our return flight got in at 10:30 PM and we might have missed the midnight train home.
We checked out two books from our library to take with us. This top 10 Mallorca book published by DK was consulted and used every day and taken with us on day trips.
The TUI deal includes a shuttle from the airport to the hotel. The more we researched the island, the more we found things we wanted to see away from the beach.
I found a deal at the time (since December is way off season) with Sixt car rental. A 7 day car rental for 99 Euros. We had a small diesel engine car (a Ford something or other). Small was good. Streets are narrow. Parking places are tight. The diesel engine was great for going up those mountain cliffs.
We also brought our navigation system. I programmed the hotel address in advance. Three problems.
1. The navigation system took about 5 minutes to reorient the GPS to Spain instead of Germany.
2. The new Sixt location is off our navigation map as the roads are too new. Coming back we had to use the map Sixt provided instead of our navigation system.
3. There is a lot of construction going on around the hotel. The road "Lola" wanted us to take (Lola is our name for our navigation system), was closed. It took about 2-3 days to figure out the best way in and out of the hotel. There was always street parking in front of the hotel while we were there.
Meet Lola, our navigation system. This is a photo of the system while we drove on mountain roads on the West Coast. Our son once joked, "Let's see if we can shake up Lola." Sometimes the hairpin curves threw her off for a few seconds! We needed to use both the navigation system AND a good map for verification. Driving those mountain roads is like driving the Grand Prix. Take your time. Enjoy the scenery. We had the roads to ourselves in December. They say in the summer there are traffic jams.You can see the island here. Palma is the largest city. We stayed near the longest white sanded beach in the region called the Playa de Palma, just south of Palma.
From this topography map you can see the mountainous terrain of the island. Some of our favorite time was spent driving around the cliffs of the western coastline.
Mallorca is part of Spain. You can see that it is an island to the East of Spain. It was about a 3 hour plane ride from Cologne, Germany.
All-inclusive vs. Half Board bookings
All -inclusive: Includes all 3 meals and drinks. Also bottled water free from the front desk. You wear a wrist band all week. If you are out sightseeing, you can ask the front desk to provide a fruit lunch. That is all it is. About 4-5 kinds of fruit and bottled water. With a big breakfast and supper, we found that was all we needed. You must ask for this the night before, before 8 PM.
Half board: This option is cheaper initially. It includes breakfast and supper. For lunch you are on your own. That's OK if you are out sightseeing every day, or if there are lots of restaurants open near the hotel. If you opt to each lunch at the hotel, they charge 13 Euros a person for that day. The food is good it's not worth that much! If you want bottled water from the front desk, I have no idea how much they would charge you! There are grocery stores around and one could stash up.
Overall, we are really glad we chose the all-inclusive option.
Overall, we are really glad we chose the all-inclusive option.
