This gentle, breathtakingly beautiful island known as Mallorca, aka Majorca, is the major or largest of Spain's Balearic Islands, located off the mainland of Spain in the Mediterranean.

 Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca and the others, are the mountain tops of an archipelago rising up from the bottom of the sea. 

This mountain range was created about a thousand centuries ago by volcanic action. It is a small island, about 60 miles wide by 30 miles north to south and has a year-round population of 600,000. 

The largest city is Palma, also known as Palma de Mallorca.  Palma is the center of the region’s autonomic government, as well as the center of transportation for the island chain. Tourism is the mainstay of the economy.  Tourist season opens in April and runs through October.  The  airport at Palma sees on the average, an arrival or departure every 3 minutes, 24 hours per day during the season.

More than 300 hotels throughout Mallorca offer accommodations ranging from cozy to sumptuous at rates considered quite reasonable.  The Mediterranean diet will readily appeal to the health conscious.  It includes a wide variety of seafood, more than 130 cheeses native to Spain, as well as a banquet of wines produced locally.  Wonderfully ripe fruits and vegetables are available in abundance, and are served with most meals.  Fruit and cheese are a typical dessert. 

Meals can be taken in restaurants or sidewalk cafes.  Spanish restaurants are rated by 1 to 5 forks (tenadores) with 5 tenadores being the highest rating.

One food specialty of Spain is paella, a saffron flavored rice and seafood dish.  Must-have cookware in a Spanish kitchen includes the paella pan, similar to a wok, but wider with lower sides.  Preparation begins with extra virgin olive oil in the pan, heated, to which chopped onions and garlic are added.  At the same time, unwashed long grain white rice is added.  The mixture is stirred until the onions are clear, and the rice grains are showing a little browning.  Saffron, salt and pepper and other desired seasonings are added, chopped tomatoes are stirred in, and enough water or stock is added to properly cook the rice.  The pan is covered for this process.  Your choice of seafood is added near the end of the rice cooking.  A mix of shrimp, clams, mussels and calamari make a wonderful dish.  Dinner is served at the table from the paella pan, with crusty bread, a light salad and wine and olives.

Here's a surprise for you:  In Spain, an omelet is a tortilla.  That's right, a tortilla of scrambled eggs, and chopped potatoes and onions that have been deep fried along with a whole, unpeeled garlic cluster cut through the middle to expose each clove.  The cooked, somewhat cooled potatoes and onions are added to a generous amount of scrambled eggs seasoned only with salt and pepper.  The mixture goes into a huge skillet and is cooked on one side, then turned onto a plate fit over the skillet.  Then the tortilla is slid off the plate, uncooked side down, into the skillet to be finished.  This is wonderfully delicious.

The best thing about Mallorca is free.  That is the sun, the water, and the wonderful climate.  It is very warm, but surprisingly not tropical.  Cool breezes constantly refresh.  Flying insects are very rare.  The island has more than 300 miles of shoreline for swimming and boating.  If you are traveling by yacht, there are countless harbors, bahias and outcroppings to explore.

A modern freeway will quickly take you eastward from Palma across a countryside lush with greenery, trees and beautiful flowers.  For centuries, the farmers have removed stones from their fields, and used them in the construction of mountainside retaining walls.  The slopes are terraced and supported by the stone walls, and their flatlands are used for produce.  A primary crop is Almonds.  The Mallorcan almond is more tender than the California almond, and roasts to a deeper flavor.

Old world windmills abound, some of them actually appear to be working, others are in obvious disrepair.  The island has no fresh ground water recoverable by wells, or windmill pumping.  In the late 19^th or early 20^th century, as the island became more and more popular, the natural fresh-water table was depleted, and wells became contaminated with salt water.  For many years now, fresh water in Mallorca has been transported to the island by barge.  From there it is pumped into tanker trucks to be delivered to all sites using fresh water.  On site the water is stored in large tanks, and is routed through the familiar plumbing. Mallorcans fully realize they lost a vital resource by losing their water.  When you visit Mallorca, please be conservative with their water. Our eastward trip will take us through Manacor, a city famous for the manufacture of pearls.  Not cultured pearls, but pearls that begin with a ceramic center bead to which layer upon layer of ground mother of pearl and epoxy are applied.  The actual process and materials are kept a secret, but the public is welcomed into the factory to observe the grading and stringing of the pearls. 

On the east coast, we encounter Soller, where restaurants are appreciated for their escargot.  The northern edge of the island has mile after mile of mountains that rise up from the water in cliffs.  Automobile travel across the northern edge is by a narrow, two lane paved road called “La Calobra,” the snake.  It is fraught with circular turns and frightening drop-offs at the edges of the cliffs, but is very scenic, if you dare to look around. The people in Mallorca are lovely.  They are very happy to hear you speak a greeting in Spanish, but be assured they can converse with you in English, or any one of several European languages.  Restaurant menus are printed in 4 or 5 languages, with text and pictures.  Brochures imparting local information often are printed in a bilingual form. Located in the Palma area, you can visit a circular castle, the last one of its type to fully survive in Europe.  Although it is not inhabited, it is fully maintained and welcomes visitors.  Nearby is a Spanish Pueblo in miniature, depicting the typical Spanish village as villages were for centuries before modernizing.