Pix from Travels

 Nothing but pictures from the years traveling abroad.

Mallorca, Part Two

One fine Sunday, in Palma.  After the events with the police and walking around Can Picafort, we decided to make a day of it in Palma, the capital of Mallorca.  Marco, Sergio, and I piled into the Opel Zafira POS and headed out.  We decided to head to the Palma Cathedral District and then head east to find a beach.  The days events will be detailed in pictures and captions, as there are quite a few pictures.  Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy as much as we did...

Beauty circa 1226-1601 AD

Nary a bad angle

Sergio

Marco

Main Doors of the Cathedral.  Dark Ages?  Look at the attention to detail!!

Narrow streets and cool street signs

Inside a smaller church next to the Cathederal

A peek at Mass

A reflecting pool between the Parliamentary Building and the Cathedral

Gnarly tree, also a World Heritage Tree

Palma Yacht Club

King of the beach?

Probably not!

Yup, the Med is like the Caribbean, just much colder this time of the year (about 65F).

Crashing of the Med

The Med in action

Ole Facefull

Close up of the blow hole, Ole Facefull

Y'all come back now, y'here?

Mallorca, Part 1

An island south of Barcelona

      This story begins on the first day, in which my supervisor and I flew into Palma after a brief stop over in Frankfurt.  Please follow me on this journey, full of pictures and hopefully beauty of the island of Mallorca.

"Home," for 11 days

The beach and a power plant, ten minutes apart.  It looked like it would be a real "tough," work location.  Luckily, we had really great help from Siemens:  Roger, Sergio, Konrad, and Marco.  We had the weekends off, so the opportunity to explore was abundant.

The first day off was supposed to be a day of exploring, but as fate would have it a bike race intervened.  We park in the street, because Europe has not figured out how to provide enough parking spaces at their hotels for their guests (a common theme for the many times I've been there).  When we returned from dinner the night before, we noticed that there were reservation signs along the street in various locations.  OK, no biggie.  We will not park near those signs.  Well, it turns out that the whole street was a no-parking zone for the bike race.  As a result, our cars (three in total) were towed the next morning.  After cornering a police officer that was willing to help, we were directed to the "impound lot."  A nice day for a 1.5 mile walk; along the way we even found an English version of the parking reservation sign:

Well isn't that nice.  We found the lot and paid the nice officer the towing fees, only to learn that we were at the wrong lot.  No worries, another police officer was willing to give us a lift.  So, three of us climbed into the back of the cop car and our colleague from Mexico sat in the front.  Our colleague and the cop were about the same age, so they were chatting amicably.  Turns out they were conniving against the three saps in the back.  Yeah, cop cars have back doors that do not open from the inside.  Once the panic subsided and the manic cop discovered the e-brake, we actually had fun in the back of "Jim Rockford's," car.

https://youtu.be/7wJcicEm0Uk

After a few minutes racing through the crowded streets, and confronting a crazed bus driver:

The bus driver scratched several cars and decided to "fix," with the help of finger nail polish remover!!

we were delivered to our rental cars.  Exactly 3 blocks from the hotel.  Yeah, my thoughts exactly.  We were advised by Office Rockford to stay out of town until the bike race ended at 9 PM.  Off to Can Picafort...

Harbor of Can Picafort

Pillbox and modern art

Sergio the fearless and egger-on-of-police officer

Pier

Sunset over Alcudia

Next up:  Palma

Until the next time:  Sergio, Konrad, and Marco