Mallorca Day 3: Stodgy Spanish omelette and friends

18.08.2014

Yesterday was beach-day, today was shopping-day. Five years ago we discovered, by accident again, our new favourite clothes shop Blanco – basically a more colourful Spanish H&M. Then, H bought a pair of red boots for ten or twenty euros, and I bought a pair of yellow ones, and here was the result. 

Stylish in 2009

The Blanco we visited five years ago was in town (before we took the detour-by-wrong-bus to Pont D'Inca), but, thanks to the hostel wifi of our smartphones' googlemaps (luxuries we didn't enjoy five years ago, ah the stone age), we found out there was a shopping centre nearer by with a Blanco in it. La Mimosa is actually quite a trek away from town, probably 20-30mins by bus, so Portopi-shopping centre 10-15mins away was a welcome choice.

Hello again Portopi!

We'd been past Portopi five years ago (note first picture was taken in front of it!:D), but didn't really realise it had a shopping centre. It was a positive surprise – a modern-looking shopping centre that was partly outside! The top floor was basically outside, and I was quite happy about it as I did suddenly feel uninspired to shop in a stuffy shopping centre with artificial lighting when we were on MALLORCA the land of AUTHENTIC lighting called THE SUN.

The outside bit

Blanco was sadly small and none of us bought anything from there, but we each found one shop (a different one each!) where we purchased at least one item of clothing that made us very happy!

Obligatory photo

The most frustrating moments were spent in Carrefour (Spain has Carrefour! I thought it was just a French thing...). I dislike Carrefours in general, MASSIVE supermarkets where it takes a few months (give or take) to walk from the fruit area to the shower gel aisle. One of our main goals was to BUY WATER. But we did not find water. We took turns striding down the different aisles filled with fruit juices, Coke, beer and wine BUT NO WATER. For a moment H-le thought she had found it... but it turned out to be fizzy water.

Definitely not water

Only after half-giving up and leaving the “obvious” water zone (ie with the drinks and fizzy waters) I discovered a huge, additional area to the supermarket with the word AGUA written in huge letters above it. An extra very large room which, lo and behold, sold 42-cent, non-bubbly AGUA :) Triumphantly I returned to H and H-le, and after having a scrumptious sample of sushi the local Japanese sushi-makers were handing out (Sushi can now officially be checked off my “to experience”-list...) we escaped one bit of the Temple of Mammon (as my dad would say).

Had a lovely Spanish-timed lunch (about half three in the afternoon) of very Spanish TAPAS :) Tapas are like starters I guess, (or, as wikipedia rather more eloquently puts it, “a wide variety of appetizers in Spanish cuisine”). H and I got three to share – meatballs, potato aioli salad and Spanish omelette – think omelette but as a big slab of ….... (I cannot think of the adjective!!! Even my human dictionary ie. my mother failed me :( Best word I can think of is FOODY. What I want to say by this is very... filling, intense in a food way. If a food were intense... it would most definitely be a Spanish omelette.)

Tapas à l'Espagnole!

FOODY CAKE OMELETTE. (later EDIT: STODGY was the word I was looking for.)

H-le had an amazing pasta carbonara and I got a very fancy sugar sachet and our waiter was a lovely youngish man who happily spoke the few words of English he knew with us. :)

Spanish style

Random shops outside the shopping centre

Then back to the hostel. Our plans for tonight, our third and last night, was a “fancy dinner”. Our first evening's dinner at Cala Nova was pretty fancy so we weren't attempting to find the poshest place. 

We decided to venture into Palma itself – in a way it seems a waste to be in a city and not visit the centre itself but then, I am trying to detach myself from my forceful idea of one-must-be-active-and-do-everything-possible-at-a-holiday-location. Holidays are for fun, not for maximum amount of experiences. Well no, they are for both, but rather fun and limited amount of experiences than not fun and many experiences. :P And especially this holiday was aimed more than any other holiday on revisiting old memories and creating new ones with lovely company. :)

Anyhows, sat in the bus towards Palma till a sufficient amount of people had boarded and unboarded meaning we were somewhere popular enough for unboarding. '

Pretty fountains seem promising 

We spotted one of those cheap Asian shops that was open till late (it was getting to 10pm, we were proper on Spanish time), the lady in the shop was refreshingly friendly and smiley and we happily spent time seriously considering getting matching dresses/tops just for the fun of it, then it came to closing time and apparently she all but kicked H and H-le out of the changing rooms (and thereby saved us money as well as the difficult choice of to-buy-or-not-to-buy).

We had dinner at the nice outdoor bit of a restaurant, nothing much really to say about it, very nice, we were all pretty tired. Oh! H-le had amazing tea.

Bananino <3 bananey frappé I think :)

H-le's amazing tea

Om nom

Had ice cream afterwards (Kinder Bueno, Baileys and yoghurt-flavours), decided to go home, saw our bus, ran to it and with excellent timing we jumped in, BUT the driver didn't accept our 50euro note so we had to jump back out. 

In the end, we were home an hour or two later since we decided to walk some way and visit the toilet at some funky bar with two customers and exciting savoury snacks. Also visited the playground we visited five years ago and went for a night paddle at our closest mini-beach.

Palma canal bridge

Funky chocs to go with the funky mocktail 

The local beach

And then home, a.k.a Mimosa, to pack. :(

The darkness depicts our sadness about this being our last night

Emzy

xxxxxxxxxxxx

PALM tree in PALMa