Mallorca became one of Europe’s most popular summer destinations for a reason. There’s no denying the island boasts stunning beaches. Unless you have a boat, though, it’s impossible to escape the crowds; don’t believe anybody who tells you any different. Even beaches proclaimed by locals as Mallorca’s most off-the-beaten-track were crowded when we recently went to investigate. Don’t even think about Magaluf, Palma Nova or Cala Millor, these are the spots to lay your towel – or rent a sun-bed!
* ES TRENC – for many sun-worshippers, this is Mallorca’s most sublime stretch of sand. Popular with naturists, this long, skinny beach is certainly a beauty, with pristine, aquamarine water and snowy sand. Reached by dirt roads and tracks through small sand dunes, it may not be the easiest beach to get to, but it still gets crowded.
* TRAMUNTANA MOUNTAINS – while you’ll need a boat to get to the best swimming spots on the spectacular coast skirting the majestic Tramuntana mountain range, there are some alluring beaches that can be reached by skinny tortuous roads, including Cala de Sa Calobra and the slightly more accessible, Cala de Deià. While it's not an easy drive to reach them (especially Sa Calobra), and it’s mindboggling how buses get here, they get very busy and it’s a long hot walk from the car park in summer.
* PORTO COLOM – several tiny crescent-shaped sandy beaches on an attractive bay; they’re miniscule but picturesque, backed by pine trees, with casual beach cafés overlooking the water. A marina and fishing town with cute fishing sheds beneath colourful houses, and good restaurants and bars, Porto Colom is one of the most alluring and laidback of Mallorca’s holiday towns. It's incredibly popular with Germans and Scandinavians who rent houses or dock their yachts at the marina for a while; most signs and menus are in German.
See part 2 for more beaches... pictured? Let me know if you can guess. This one was hugely popular but difficult to locate, and it's in my least favorite part of Mallorca I have to say.
The cheapest apartment in Savudrija you can find is around 40 EUR per day, and the most expensive cost well over 100 EUR. Before renting Savudrija apartments you need to be informed about self catering in Croatia - it is not like renting a hotel room where you are renting an apartment with hotel services. Renting an apartment in Savudrija is cost effective, particularly for larger groups where you would need to book multiple hotel rooms. In many cases, not only will you save money, but will benefit from greater privacy and space. You will be renting a true home which will have only weekly cleaning, not daily but you will have your our own kitchen and you will need to go out on the first day and do your grocery shopping. Most apartment rentals require a deposit and there's the inevitable anxiety of sending money to a person or agency met only online.
If you are planning a last minute Savudrija vacation and your hotel is already fully booked, why not contact us to see if we have a suitable apartment for a more cost effective and enjoyable holiday experience?
Of course experiencing local culture is not high on every traveller's list of priorities - as we were often reminded in Mallorca. Some people simply want to lie in the sun and read a book, others just want to have fun with friends, and they don't care where they do it. But when I write, I write with a different audience in mind - one for whom experiencing local culture, language, history, art, and cuisine and so on are just as important than lying by a pool. Unfortunately, Mallorca has for too long focused its sights on promoting sun and sand - or bucket and spade - tourism. And through its efforts to make the holiday experience for sunworshippers cheap and easy, the island has lost much of its culture and destroyed some of its coastline in the process. I'm talking about the wall-to-wall high-rise hotels, the once-pretty coves now backed by ugly concrete apartment blocks, the menus in four languages and featuring beef stroganof and fish and chips, and an abundance of tacky souvenir shops, Irish bars, British pubs, betting shops, and lap-dancing clubs. This is what I don't like about Mallorca. Mass tourism in its ugliest form. And sadly, it can be a challenge to escape it. It's not a handful of towns that have given over to package tourists, as is the case in Cyprus, but a whole stretch of coastline west of Palma, another in the north, and dozens of other spots in the east and south. And don't think Mallorcans are happy about this. Most we met are not - especially the younger generation - but they seem powerless to do anything about it and admit they've lost control. Why? Because much of the development is foreign-owned. Mallorca makes a great case study for how not to develop tourism. But on a positive note, it's also a brilliant candidate for an experiment in sustainable tourism and how to turn a destination around.
So what did we not enjoy about Mallorca? Well, Mallorca is not for everyone. Sure, that could be said about a lot of places, but there are some destinations that few people dislike: Paris, Italy, Thailand for instance. And perhaps it's just that - despite the stunning landscapes, fascinating people, beautiful hotels and fabulous restaurants - Mallorca is not for me. Would I go there again? To work, absolutely. I'd happily go back and talk to the island's talented chefs or write about its burgeoning wine industry. Off-season though. Would I go there on holidays? No, most probably not. And for us, that's one of the criteria we use to judge a destination. If it's the kind of place where I think "I'd prefer to be lying on that beach than writing about it" or a place I make a mental note to return to one day, then I place it fairly high on my list of great destinations. But it's more complex than that. There are other things I disliked about Mallorca. Mainly, that Mallorca did not feel like Spain. Nor did it feel Catalan. Juxtaposed with Barcelona, where we spent five days after Mallorca, that was even more apparent. Barcelona is a cosmopolitan, multicultural city, immensely popular with tourists, with a reasonable-sized expat population - yet it's still retained its unique Catalan identity and essential Spanish-ness. Mallorca, sadly, has lost a lot of the characteristics that make it Mallorcan. They are still there, of course - the language, cuisine, arts and crafts, traditional customs, etc - they're just very hard to find. We located them of course - because that's what travel writers do - but I continually wondered how tourists there for a week fared. Mallorca is a place where you most definitely need to use a quality guidebook, follow some good local blogs, have a local guide, or quickly make local friends, if you want to experience the 'real' Mallorca - or as the Mallorquins like to say, 'the other Mallorca'. Unfortunately, for most tourists visiting the island, the closest they'll get to Mallorcan culture are artificial experiences (as fun as they can be) like La Granja, pictured.
We've finished our work on Mallorca - Terry shooting photos for three books, and me updating a travel guidebook. It was nearly seven weeks in total, and by the end of it Terry felt like a contestant on Survivor, desperate to get off the island. Did we not enjoy Mallorca? We did - absolutely - to a certain extent. We met some incredible people, both Mallorquins and expats, from chefs and sommeliers to hotel owners and bartenders. The people were definitely the highlight of our stay. We also checked in to some stunning hotels, ate some extraordinary food, and drank some superb Mallorcan wine. After that, it was the landscapes that took my breath away - the spectacular coastline with sheer craggy cliffs that dramatically drop down to the sea, crystal clear aquamarine water lapping white sand beaches, sailing boats bobbing in the sea off-shore, and the typically-Mediterranean scenery that I have always been besotted with: mountains thick with pine, cypress and cork-oak trees; terrace hillsides covered with vineyards, olive groves and citrus orchards; countryside fragrant with wild lavender, myrtle and thyme; and old villages that tumble down hillsides, dominated by monumental churches and charming cafe-filled squares, with cobblestone lanes lined with sandstone houses. And in Mallorca there was an added bonus - the ramshackle windmills scattered across the whole island. But...?
Pictured is Pollenca, one of my favorite Mallorcan towns in the north.
The Grand Canyon, with its mile-high, multicolored rock walls, craggy cliffs, and sandy slopes, is the embodiment of nature's awesome power and surpassing beauty. The Grand Canyon , carved by the Colorado River in the United States, one of the world's premier natural attractions is a great place to take pictures.Follow the amusing antics of the ravens and condors soaring high above the rim. Savor a beautiful sunrise or tranquil sunset. This fall the park looks forward to the completion of the Hermit Road reconstruction project. Since last spring the contractor has been repaving the roadway, improving the pullouts and shuttle bus stops, and developing a new segment of the hiking and bicycling Greenway Trail. Simultaneously, the National Park Service crews have been working on the Rim Trail. They anticipate reopening the Hermit Road to all traffic sometime in November. Check with the Visitor Center or with a park ranger for the date.
President Theodore Roosevelt stood on the Grand Canyon South Rim more than 100 years ago and implored the assembled crowd to “Keep this great wonder of nature as it now is . . . Keep it for your children and your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”
Today the Grand Canyon South Rim National Park welcomes travelers from all over the world to this great wonder. As one of the great tourist spots in the world, The Grand Canyon have prevailed it's greatness and sense of being a tourist haven.
The Grand Canyon is one of the greatest places that is considered to be a MUST-SEE!
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It stands on a small island in the middle of the New York City harbor and was designed by Sculptor Frederick Auguste Bertholdi. The Statue of Liberty is said to be a gift of international friendship from the people of France in commemoration of the USA centennial anniversary in 1876.The 151-feet (46-meters) tall monument stands atop a granite pedestal above the walls of a star shaped abutment. It was not completed and dedicated until October 28 1886. It was designated a National Monument on October 15, 1924. The Statue of Liberty has become one of the most universal symbols of Freedom and Democracy.
The statue is much more impressive when you are standing at its feet looking up. It is worth taking the ferry to Liberty Island just for this view. You cannot enter the statue itself, but you can tour the promenade at the base of the statue and you can enter the observatory inside the base and look up into the inner structure of the statue. To get to the Statue of Liberty, which resides on Liberty Island, you must take a ferry either from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey or Battery Park in New York City. If you plan on visiting Liberty Island, you should be aware that a visit on average is about three hours, if you take a tour.
Probably the most popular icon of New York City is the Statue Of Liberty. This may be because; it represents what this country is all about, freedom. Following the Empire State Building most tourists visit Statue Of Liberty.
The Island provides plenty of area for picnics and small family gatherings and even a Junior Ranger program available for children. The observatory all the way on top of the Statue is closed to the public, due to security reasons. Admission to Liberty Island and all it has to offer is quite inexpensive. Adults pay $11.50, Senior Citizens $9.50, Children $4.50 and Children under 3 years of age gain free admission. Liberty Island opens at 8:30 am and the last ferry leaves its dock at 6:30 pm.
Truly, the Statue of Liberty have not only became a universal symbol of freedom and democracy, it has as well built to attract tourists!
As we travelled around Mallorca over the last (gulp) six weeks (a long time to spend on the one island), we spent a lot of time visiting Mallorca's beaches - although sadly not spreading our towels out on them. Rather, Terry was photographing them, and I was checking them out for an update of a guidebook - so every visit was a hit and run. I admit that I may well be out of touch when it comes to inflatable beach toys, but I was astonished to see the variety of blow-up beds, lounges, tubes and toys, some especially whacky, like this double tube being carried by these guys in the picture. I wondered if floating about on this thing together was something they found to be lots of fun (they looked a bit too old to me), or whether a silly inflatable was simply a cool beach accessory. Nothing quite says 'summer holiday' like carrying one of these under your arm as you traipse along the sand.
The Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur are one of the world’s tallest buildings. From 1998 to 2004 they remained as the tallest building ever built, however in 2004 Taipei 101 in Taiwan took the title which stands nearly 200 foot taller. But even if Taipei 101 is taller than the Petronas Towers, the Petronas Towers still stand today as the world’s tallest twin towers.
As we've spent a long time living in the Gulf we've seen a lot of kooky round- abouts. Al Ain in the UAE probably wins the prize for kitschiest with its giant coffee pots but Mallorca follows pretty close behind with some of the most surprising roundabouts around. One I like features a traditional stone wall and wooden fence of the kind you typically find leading to fincas in the countryside here, but the most bizarre one must be this roundabout boasting a big deckchair at Can Picafort, a busy resort town on the northeast coast where tourists moved around on family-sized pedal-vehicles on the main road and they have eateries named Pizzeria Hamburg and Taverna Bavaria. Apt? Had any experience with kitschy roundabouts? Where is the most bizarre one you've seen? Or simply the most memorable?
I love shooting signs on our travels. They reveal so much about a place, its culture, norms, codes of conduct and acceptable behaviour - all of which can often be in conflict, or at least very stark contrast to those of tourists visiting the place. Many churches (and mosques) throughout the world require modest dress codes of visitors. In Italy, the signs outside churches prohibit you from entering in shorts, short skirts and revealing tops. In Mallorca, the typical tourist's street 'attire' warrants this sign. If you saw people walking around the street, you'd completely understand. At Palma airport, minutes after a young male British traveller arrived and collected his luggage from the baggage carousel, he was already pulling off his t-shirt.
Mount Rushmore (also known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial) is a grand sculpture located in the United States Presidential Memorial. It was established on March 3, 1925. Made by the famous American artist and sculptor Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum along with 400 other workers between October 4, 1927 and October 31, 1941, this granite sculpture symbolizes the first 150 years of the United States of America's history. This great historical landmark is located in Pennington County near Keystone, South Dakota, and it encompasses 1,278.45 acres and is measured at 5,725 feet above sea level. Borglum to accomplish it. Being an enormous 60-foot sculpture, Mount Rushmore shows the carvings of the heads of four former presidents of the United States, namely George Washington (1732 to 1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743 to 1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858 to 1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1809 to 1965). These presidents were chosen by the sculptor due to their great role in upholding the Republic, as well as for the expansion of its domains.
