Welcome to sunny Malloca!

....or should I say, welcome to the experience of msising your flight & finally making it to Mallorca only to wake up the next morning to the storm of the century, fully equipt with explosions of thunder, lightining, hail, power outages & street ankle-deep in flood water. Mix in two backpackers with soaking wet shoes & make-shift rain ponchos wandering the street trying to find a suitable indoor space to hide. That was our day.

Although, I must admit now I´m sitting in the warm comfort of a four-star hotel that we decided to splurge on-and definatelly deserve. We´re in the beautiful Porto de Soller, on the north western part of the island of Mallorca-and island 400 or so miles off the coast of Spain. It´s a very cute village sorrouded by dramatic hills with a beautiful beach and bright blue water. Our hotel, Esplendido, is built into the hills with a beautiful view of of entire bay, and one of those ínfinity pools where it looks like it goes on forever. Some pictures can be found here.

Today wasn´t so bad though, wandering with our packs in the rain. We got many stares and took solice in a cute little café that hand squeezes oranges fresh to order (I just read that Sollér originally comes from the Catillian word for orange, and it´s no wonder that they have great juice here). The Cattilian dialext here is very different from Spanish, but we´ve managed to communicate well.

We´ve continued our tendency to wander the streets and alleyways, ocassionally finding little gems along the way--churches, cathedrals, charming cafés & beautiful courtyards.

The plan tomorrow is another swim and a trip to some caves on the other side of the island. We´ll return to Mallorca´s capital, Palma, and catch an early flight back to the mainland, this time to Valencia and visit the City of Arts and Sciences--go look at this site, this place is so cool! It has the largest aquarium in Europe!

I´ll post more as soon as I can! Pictures to some, hopefully!

Alyssa