Mallorca Day 2: Illetes, mistranslations and pelican-cocktails!

17.08.2014

Today was the day for ILLETES :) Tell you about Illetes? Ok.

“Mainly frequented by independent travellers, part of its charm lies in the fact that it is largely undiscovered by package tourists. Mainly populated by 4* hotels, holidays are not a cheap option here and will appeal in the main to professional couples or families who discover a resort that has been compared by travel writers to Monte Carlo.” Love from http://www.mallorca-spotlight.com/resorts/illetas.htm

We discovered it sort of accidentally last time, as it was at the other terminus of our bus route (NOT Pont D'Inca, see previous entry...). So, since we are a wealthy professional couple... Wait no.

Swimming pool!!

Breakfast

Evil finger-eating cat

Illetes-time!!

After an amazing morning swim in the hostel pool and a scrumptious breakfast, we took the bus number 3 to Illetes. I do want to say that if Illetes is “largely undiscovered by package tourists” I dread to think what beaches that have been discovered by package tourists look like... It felt that every inch of the beach was covered.

The undiscovered beach

Out of the bus :)

When we last visited Illetes it was cloudy April. H-le, the braveheart, did go swimming then, but this time round all three of us happily jumped in after very nice ice creams (I had a chocolatey latte-y cone, H had an amazing looking watermelon- and kiwi-lolly, and H-le had a refreshing looking Spanish Solero-equivalent). Also, we had bought a waterproof camera from the local Chinese “Bazar”-shop which we had great fun attempting to take pics with under water. (Got the pictures a few days ago, most are fuzzy and especially the selfies are way too zoomed in to be either interesting or appropriate... But still, fun memories :D) Literally, swimming in the Mediterranean brings happiness. I've not really been such a keen swimmer after my childhood, but in these waters that keenness returned :) :)

So, quick question time now. Do you think touristy places like Mallorca have crazy humongous ridiculous mistakes in their English menus on purpose? Sometimes it just seems so hard to believe that so many English-speaking tourists go through these cafés and yet the English in their menus is... questionable!?

Let me give you a few examples from the menu from the café at Illetes beach that literally never fail to make us giggle when we see them.

Strawberries with Scum

Example Uno. 'Scum' I guess is a twist on the word 'cream'... Well I guess, add an s, take away an r and make 'ea' into 'u', voilà! Ok, understandable. (Note a level of sarcasm)

Slurps

Example Dos. My personal favourite. Frozen glass of Nuts, anyone? (Upgrade to frozen bowl for 50 cents, frozen plate for a euro... OR EVEN buy your own cooler bag for an extra 5 euros so you can enjoy your Frozen glass of Nuts wherever you want...) In all seriousness, I understand this one too - hazelnut-flavoured ice cream is probably what a more native speaker would say. But 'glass' is similar to at least the Swedish word for ice cream ('en glass')... Ok, understandable.

I happen in the Salad Cheese of Goat

Example Tres. Let me spell it out for you. “Salad Cheese of Goat: Varied lettuces, cherrys, dry tomato, nuts, you happen and cheese of goat.” Despite the name of the salad being less than charming; despite the fact that, when comparing it to the other translations, you realise they mean cherry tomatoes and not just cherries, and even despite the fact that dry tomato does not sound like the most appetising of tomatoes, the biggest mistake is, like, um......  what ingredient is 'you happen'!? They also translated 'César sauce' in one of the salads as 'sauce To stop', which creates equally as many questions... (EDIT: Brainwave! I checked and my brainwave was correct: the Spanish verb 'cesar' means 'to cease, to stop' in English. But what about the you happen...? Any theories?) (More edit: Ah. Ok. 'You happen' is pronounced in correct English 'raisins'. In Spanish it is 'pasas'. And 'to happen' is 'pasar'...) (Ah I am so proud of myself I finally figured this out :) )

Oh bless you Mallorca :)

It is fair to say we had a highly amused time queueing up for our Frappé and our, hrm, Handle Smoothie (the other languages on the menu informed us that 'Handle' is the English word for 'Mango').

Fair enough, well done Illetes-beach café for having four different languages on your menus. And don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining. It's all the holiday experience, and I'm sure we gained at least a few minutes of life time from laughing at your menu... And the Handle Smoothie was AMAZING, like, it was clearly not tinned Handle or anything, but proper fresh Handle made into a freshly-made, summery Handle Smoothie. OM NOM.

H-le enjoying the amazingly delicious Handle smoothie

ANYHOW. New topic. Five years ago we discovered 'The Island'. An island with a tower on it, which H-le tried bravely wading/swimming to (it's not even that deep). However, the current of April 2009 was very strong and quite dangerous, so even courageous H-le gave up. But, one day we will... we decided.

One day was today. For H-le. We even considered the idea of trying to take our stuff to the island by wading the whole trip. We watched some guys do it – it looked precarious, but they managed... H-le decided she was up for the challenge. With her kiwi-bag (Christmas present from me:)) on her head like a talented exotic woman, she joined The Island Queue (consisting completely of fit-looking young men, so we were very proud of our female addition <3) and made her way through the jagged rocks to The Island. Hurray!

H-le is the one in the middle with the hat and white bag on head

H and I decided we preferred just dressing up in the various multi-coloured clothes we had taken with us and take photos. H-le returned, so now we just needed the kiwi bag back from The Island shore. H-le swam back, and managed to successfully ask one of them young fit lads (or well, man) to bring the bag back to us (while she disappeared off to check out the tower, recommended by him, apparently twas very cool!!). He broke his flip-flop on the way. :( But what a hero!

Our hero in the sea

Then it was time to go back and hang at the hostel pool. I proudly have never thought of myself as someone who “wastes” their holiday by the pool. Well, I think I'm less narrow-minded about that now, since the pool was one of the best times there! Many jumping photos :)

And kiwi card games :)

Our evening meal was most probably “lunch” in Spanish, since we had it at about half past five. (If my Spanish housemate was anything to go by, breakfast was at 1pm, lunch at 6pm and dinner at midnightish...) We stopped at a nearby café which offered meals for under ten euros, and our choice of food hole was confirmed to be excellent when the café owner turned out to be a ridiculously adorable elderly man called Tito who keenly practised his limited English with us. His adorableness points rose even higher after he poured an entire glass of wine on me, apologised cutely and brought us a packet of M&M's as compensation.

Thank you Tito

H's Titoese carrot cake 

Future Mallorca visitors: GO HERE :) 

The evening was spent napping and then sampling our home street's cocktails. After our hostel-Sophie pointed out she couldn't make us cocktails since she didn't have limes and “her cocktails always have limes” (quickly became an inside joke of ours), we luckily found other cocktail-serving venues, most notably the place that served a Malibu Dream-cocktail with ice cream in it in a pelican glassholder. A picture will do it more justice...

Not what we were expecting...

INCREDIBLE. That was H's drink, topping all other drinks we had taste- and appearance- and accessorywise! H-le's was a good second with a massively long straw, so long that if you wanted to drink from it you had to be stood up.

Then we ended up in a cute restaurant called Indian Ocean, which would have been lovely to go to in the daytime as it was RIGHT near the sea – the big terasse area in a way was over the sea... And we made friends with the owner who told us about his business woes which was a fun random surprise (not the business woes, but the new friend.) :)

The sea is to the left

IF YOU GO TO MAJORCA, PLEASE VISIT THE INDIAN OCEAN AND SUPPORT THEM <3 (They even have limes)

See!

And that was Day 2! All in all a perfect day. 

Emmmmmzzzzzzyyy

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