Palma is becoming fashionable as a starting point for cruises and has long been that convenient port of call, where you will dock almost within walking distance of Palma Old Town. The advantages that Palma has as a home port are many, not least the fantastic range of flights on offer from all over the UK. If you are booking a western med cruise from Palma there is a good chance you can take advantage of a flight from your nearest airport to Palma’s modern international airport. There are charter as well as low cost flights available from over 20 airports across England, Scotland and Wales so you should have a good choice of flights and times.
Arrival to Palma, Mallorca (by flight)
Palma airport (PMI) is large and new. With a population of just 360 000, one could perhaps expect to Palma airport would be less substantial, but it is a real major airport with capacity for 21 million passengers a year. The distance to town is short, just over 15 km and the taxi prices are reasonable. Traffic can be heavy during rush hours, so count on about an hour to Palma cruise port which is located in the centre across town.
Palma has plenty of city buses operating until around midnight. Taxis are affordable, in any case cheaper than at home. Horse carriage rides are also available – much more romantic, surprisingly fast and quite expensive.
If you are flying from Southern England the flight time to Mallorca is around three hours, from the North / Scotland it may be up to a four hour flight.
If you choose to stay a bit outside of the classic package holiday resorts you have the chance to enjoy both bucket and spade beach holiday and big-city life. A good meal for two need not cost you more than €50, and then you should feel you have received real value for your money (if only the exchange rate with the Pound was better!), if you choose carefully and avoid the tourist traps that serve you bad food for the exact same price, a really bad business. This may be your only restaurant cost for the day. For the morning, why not pass by a “supermercado” and buy a hot, fresh baguette, some local cheese from Mallorca or Menorca, some fruit and water and yoghurt, plus maybe some small Canarian bananas, which are a bit drier (not sticky in the heat) and concentrated sweetness than Caribbean banana and you have a handy picnic in the sun down by the turquoise sea.
The sea surrounds you everywhere in Palma. Playa de Palma in El Arenal, Palma is the largest and finest beach. Magaluf and Palma Nova at the other end also have impressive sandy beaches. Other resorts have their typical small local bays. Cala Mayor is the last beach before all the marinas with their often spectacular boats will take over – moored in their thousands interspersed with ferries and cruise ships almost into Palma’s obvious target and beacon; Palma Cathedral.
Palma City
Cathedral La Seu, which in Catalan means the lavish ship, is easy to find where it exposes itself to the sea, surrounded and protected by its neighbor, the Palau de l’Almudaina, the Moorish palace with its sumptuous setting of the Arabic fountain and park art, carefully renovated and illuminated at night by a black swan as the guardian of its dam. It is said that the cathedral is particularly worth seeing in the morning when the morning light comes streaming in through its 32 large stained glass windows, the largest of which is over 100 square feet and comprises 1236 multi-colored glass panels. If you have actually seen it in the morning light, you are one of the few who actually follow the guide books recommendation, for Palma is not in general an “early bird” town.
Palma is otherwise very pedestrian-friendly – rich in cafes and beautiful fountains, and blessed with shady trees.
The old town is full of winding streets. See in between the ports of splints sometimes wonderful, sometimes lush, courtyards behind the outwardly austere and closed facades. There are palaces and churches in abundance, and decay. But now saved anyway facades and the “fasadismens” name brand-new buildings behind old facades, but it is still not the same atmosphere. Look for Can Rei, near Plaza Mayor “Gaudisskolans” organic design of the housing unit you can not miss, is anything but austere – is a single right angle in this beautiful house? Plaza Mayor is quite boring, with a discount mall in, but the starting point for the Carrer de Sant Miguel, a shopping street with trend and low prices to get you up at the Plaza d `Espanya – and station houses for the wooden train towards Soller and station houses of the now defunct narrow gauge railway to Inca. If you are taking right now and follow Avinguda Alexandra will take you to one of Palma’s three El Corte Ingles, the mandatory seven-storey department store that includes fashion, shoes, accessories and a fantastic food and wine section in the basement. From here you can go wrong in the Plaza Mayor again on this shopping trip. Then follow La Unió with their expensive / nice shops to the fountain at Plaza Joan Carlos I and along Av. Jaume III, nice shopping street that ends with the other El Corte Ingles. As a rule of thumb, the closer you are to the sea, the more restaurants and tourist traps you will encounter.
The newly built Museum of Modern Art, Es Baluard located next to “River” and it in turn border town of Santa Catalina, Palma’s gentrified district, more worn, but newly-trendy. This is where the new restaurants are springing up in the old part – be a bit above the sea and near the cruise terminal – in the streets with two-three-story house in the style of mixing with small-town feel. This is where the Spaniards themselves eat and one thing to bear in mind is that this means that restaurants open for dinner no earlier than 21:00 and are closed on some unknown day in the week. One of the trends that are definitely hot right now is combination with the Basque region foods – which means lots of fish and shellfish. As it is now happy to serve Mallorcan wines – the Mallorcan wine has previously been bitter sweet local red wines, but today the local grapes received winemaker with an eye for the fine taste makers and a whole bunch of good local wines awaits you now at affordable prices of between 10-16 euros a bottle – often the cheapest on the wine list, but please ask for advice to avoid the all too traditional and boring.
If you want romance with more finesse do not forget that Mallorca is part of Catalonia, which is a major producer of cava, many of which are produced as carefully as champagne. How carefully is a price issue, but the selection is great and the quality is generally underestimated.
Cafe culture is popular and runs late into the night. Palma is a fun city, more hip than the population suggests and feels like a bigger city than it is, but still, there is an aura of calm and safety. It is not just a summer tourist town, but has a lot going on for locals too and is pleasant all year round.
Cruise and Stay Holidays Mallorca
As a home port, there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy a cruise and stay (or stay and cruise) holiday in Mallorca. Thomson Cruises offer some nice four and five star hotels in Mallorca in combination with their Med cruises. The Thomson Gold hotels seem to work well. One thing to bear in mind with a cruise and stay is that, thanks to the fantastic service (staff:passenger ratio) you get on a cruise holiday, even a very well run hotel often fades in comparison. You have been warned !.
If you have a spare day and want to see something more of Mallorca try the old train to Soller and proceed with antique tram to the beach.
Car hire is cheap in Spain compared with many other European countries and in Majorca it’s about standard prices for the country as a whole.
From Mallorca you can also take advantage of the frequent ships running scheduled services to the neighbouring islands of Ibiza and Menorca as well as to Barcelona.