Beautiful Balearics Part 2

Let’s escape yet another grey November day and head off to warmer climes! 

Back to the Balearics! 

Mallorca was a life changer for me, why? Well apart from learning the joys of travel, I met my husband there ….. a holiday romance, in the true sense of the word! My Dad jokingly told me that he'd taken me on holiday for all those years and now it was time to find a husband! Little did he think that a couple of hours later, a handsome German lad chatted me up while I was sketching and the rest is history! We actually returned a couple of years later as a married couple.

Mallorca has so much more to offer than drunken tourists and I particularly enjoyed visiting The Caves of Drach with their spectacular caverns full of stalactites and stalagmites; transparent lakes and eerie music. Another spectacular trip was to the monastery of Sant Salvador, perched on a precipice which makes it visible from practically everywhere on the island! If you’re up for thrills, the serpentines leading up to it are mind blowing. 

In Menorca, we enjoyed diving and snorkelling, one fabulous dive called the Labyrinth sticks in my mind, beautiful and there I saw my first (highly poisonous) Lionfish. Snorkelling was great too, unfortunately the deserted bays were a bit of a walk, so off we traipsed carrying our gear and wearing our very unsexy diving shoes and T-shirts to protect our modesty, the downside of this was the very sodden, squelchy walk back, made worse by the fact that to get to our hotel room we had to walk through the reception. I'm sure they must have loved us, looking like drowned rats and dripping all over the polished floor. 

While snorkelling we encountered a very strange looking black snail writhing in the water; we prodded it gently and regretted not having a jar or something with us so we could ask at the dive base what the strange creature was.  Believe me we were spared a lot of embarrassment when I realised it was a black velvet scrunchy that had fallen out of my hair. 

The ''Royal Lilo'' also deserves a mention. Next to where we stayed was an amazing villa which belonged to the Shah of Iran, we often saw guests partying in the garden. Exotic silk pavilions, buffets and endless guests arriving and leaving in Riva speedboats, obviously living the Good life! One morning the guests decided it was time for some fun in the bay, so out came lilos and waterskis and  so passed the day being pulled along on the lilos behind the speedboats. To the rich and famous, cheap thrills and so they left the lilos in the sea, overnight one landed on the beach. My Dad propped it up on a wall, nobody picked it up and so he inherited the Royal Lilo! Much to the envy of all his friends and it gave him a lot of pleasure for many holidays. 

Finally, me in my disco shoes! 

Yes, that’s me having taken part in a Miss competition, don’t ask me how that happened…….  but that’s me in my trendy boob tube and dancing shoes (and may I add, with yet another terrible haircut). I must be about 16. I was a disco freak and the evenings saw me donning my stilettos and running from one local disco to another to dance to Boney M's Rasputin or Ma Baker, I think in this photo I was probably too cool for Boney M. 

The beautiful Balearics, I'd love to be strolling along your beaches right now, instead I'll have to go and put out our organic recycling bin! Maybe I can listen to Ma Baker while I'm doing it but let’s forget the shoes for now, stilettos really are a thing of the past.