The Honeymoon...Finally!!!!

For those of you who didn't already know, Leisa and I were blessed to go to Mallorca for our honeymoon. Mallorca is a tiny little island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. This was going to be kept a secret from Leisa until we checked in at the airport, but of course, you can't remember to tell everyone that it is supposed to be a secret and the person you think will least likely spill the beans is exactly the person who tells.

So we got married on Saturday and we were off on Sunday afternoon for Spain. Our flight to Dallas left at 12 noon...or so it was supposed to. It didn't leave until 1:30 which made us worried that we would miss our flight to Madrid. A few phone calls to some in touch family members let us know that our flight leaving Dallas for Madrid was 3 hours late. Well, that didn't really make us feel much better. That meant that for sure we would miss our flight to our little island of Mallorca. We talked to the ladies in Dallas and they kindly put us on the next flight, which surprisingly wasn't until later that afternoon. So instead of getting on the 11:30 flight to Mallorca on Monday morning, we weren't going to be Mallorca-bound until 4:30. Well, on arrival to Madrid, we could see things were going to be a mess. To spare you all the details, let me just tell you that there was quite the fiasco trying to get our bag situation figured out. We almost lost my bag forever, I'll just leave it at that. Then it was snowing in Madrid, which I guess is not common. Everything was getting out of whack for snow that wasn't even sticking to the ground. So our flight to Mallorca was delayed until at least 5:30. We didn't end up leaving until about 7 and by the time we got there, got our bags in the most confusing airport known to the face of this earth, got our rental car and got checked into our condo, it was close to 10 pm. That puts us about 9 hours behind schedule. We were exhausted...and a little frazzled. So we hit the sack ready for the next day and all the activities we had planned for our little trip to an island we had heard so much about....

...of course we should have known that not setting your alarm in a completely different time zone is not a good idea. We slept all the way until 2 pm on Tuesday. So much for our fun filled day. We hurried up and got ready and ate and headed into the capital of the island, Palma. It was a gloomy day anyways and was raining and SSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO windy! Like almost hurricane windy. Real bad! It should also be told that this is the day we lost our extra memory drive for our camera. I forgot to tell Leisa that I had placed it in our camera case and it fell out somewhere along the road. So at this point, we are stuck in a country that has not been brought up to date in camera technology with only a 128 MB memory card. That adds up to about 50 pictures. Very upsetting as we had to delete pictures and not take certain pictures that we would have anyways.

Leisa outside of our villa. It was all ours...even the upstairs.

Me in the manual transmission VW that I dominated in the week we were there.

This is the coolest castle/cathedral that I have ever laid my own eyes on. It is in downtown Palma. We decided to take a tour and it was well worth it.

Notice how I make Leisa get in all the important pictures. She is much easier on the eyes then I am.

I think my above point is made with this picture. But behind me are some tapestries from pre-Columbus times. Talk about amazing...and old!

Me gettin' my chops around a delicious Spanish pastry. So good. To all of you who are thinking I hogged it all for myself (I know you're out there)...don't worry, I shared with Leisa.

The next day we caught wind of these moving markets that happened in different villages throughout the island and so we decided to go and check one out. It was your typical street market, but with tons of Africans. It makes sense now thinking about it and Mallorca's proximity to Africa, but I would have never guessed. After the market, we headed to the very northern tip of the island to a look out point and a cool lighthouse. Well worth the drive, although it was very long and very windy and made on very narrow roads. Again, hurricane force winds.
Mallorca had so many windmills, none of which worked. But they were cool and were a nice touch to the landscape. Leisa loved them and I love Leisa, so I thought...hmmm, why not get a picture with both of them?

Yours truly in the market in a little village called Sineu. It is so neat how European towns are set up. The Cathedral is always in the center.

This is at the northern point of the island. It was so windy we almost didn't enjoy it. Why I don't have a jacket on is beyond me. It was freezing. Such cool vistas and because it is so not the tourist season right now (more on this later), we had it all to ourselves.

The very cool lighthouse and the very beautiful scenery. We even saw a huge ship out in the distance. My only question was..."Is he using this lighthouse to guide him?"

I am so proud of this picture...of course Leisa took it. ;)

The next day we decided to head back to the north part of the island (only about an hours drive) and see some of the things we hadn't seen yet that we wanted to. Man was it worth it. The scenery was awesome. We went to this awesome place called Sa Calobra. It was deserted. You could tell that during the summer months, this is a Spanish Waikiki, but in December, it is the surface of Mars. Kind of spooky because the road to get to it is a windy road down this rocky cliff. On our way back up there was a mini-rockslide that almost blocked our only way back to the main road. I don't even want to think about what the possibilities could have been.  This is just a huge rock that decided to meet up over the middle of the road.

This looks like an old Roman aqueduct. Leisa loved it and took a picture while I was safely navigating the narrow European roads. ;)

Yes that is the Mediterranean and yes we touched it.

Us getting cozy in front of the little tunnel we walked through. Lucky there was no one around. ;)

After that fun filled day, we headed to some cool villages that we had seen on the Travel Chanel. On the program we saw people in the streets having fun and drinking and eating and laughing and dancing. There were bands playing music and kids playing games. It was cool looking. But when we showed up, we saw one person, and that was a police officer. Stores were closed, windows were boarded up, churches were empty, cars were vacant from the street. It was eerie...like a ghost town.  Leisa and beautiful Soller..

Me at Port de Soller. Look at the Muslim influence in the buildings behind me.

I had to include this picture because I climbed this hill and got all winded just to snap a picture in which Leisa is the size of a paper clip and the thing that stands out the most is our car and a trash dumpster.

Frederic Chopin lived on Mallorca for a time and so we had to chase down his digs and I had to get a picture next to his bust. Can you guess which one is which?

The lovely couple in Valldemosa.

The next day was Christmas and we decided to just hang around the villa and go to the hot tub and go to the golf driving range they had on site, whereupon Leisa issued me a beat down. She has a great swing! On our last day we chased down to another market on the south side of the island. At this point though we had only two pictures left. So we used them sparingly. We toured the south and east side of the island that day and some will be interested in knowing we drove through Manacor, the hometown of famous tennis star Rafael Nadal. We also went to this cool cave which had laser shows and Mozart inside. It was so stunning for both of us. We met these two crazy Canadian ladies. All I remember though is the Mozart. Also of interest is that these caves were the inspiration to French author Jules Vern and helped him come up with the idea for the book "Around the World in 80 Days". To top off our trip, we went back to where we started, Palma. Leisa wanted to find a Spanish Nativity and I had some unfinished business with a certain Pirate fellow. To put your minds at ease, we were successful on both accords.
This was a random lookout point along the way that we had to stop at because it had a cool hatch to get up inside it and the view was great. Again though, if I weighed 50 pounds less, the wind would have blown me right into the ocean.

The awesome caves. Plenty of stalagmites and stalactites for the cave lovers.

Me and the dueling pirate. He gave me a candy at the end though.

Sadly we had to go back home the next day. The return trip was much smoother thankfully. We had a great trip and made lots of memories. It was nice to just get away and be with just us two and do what we wanted to do. We sure enjoyed our trip and hope you have enjoyed the trip report! Next up is either the tour of our new apartment or our wedding. I haven't decided yet.