Mallorca Without a Map Part II

Day 2: All that I want to do is figure out how to create a cathedral in a blackbox. Top priority.

I didn't set my alarm for Saturday morning and so even though I went to sleep around 11 Friday night, I didn't wake up until 9:30 or so the next morning. Still catching up on lost sleep from Brian's visit. I took my time getting ready and then stopped in the lobby of the hostel to ask how to get to the Cathedral. The woman who owned the place (who spoke English) didn't seem to know but she asked another woman, in Spanish, what to do. The Spanish woman started telling me, and I mostly understood, but when both I and the hostel owner asked what the name of the stop was for the Cathedral, we must have all gotten confused somewhere in the bridge between Spanish and English, because I got told something that sounded like "alseo." So I headed off to the bus stop and looked for my stop on the route. I didn't see anything like that. But I got on the bus.

Took this picture for my brother, who loves the Simposons - Spain also loves Los Simpson

Eventually I got off back at Plaça de Espayna, because I at least knew where that was and I knew a lot of busses stopped there and I hoped maybe I could just look at a map and walk to the cathedral. First I decided to find someplace for breakfast, and after a lot of wandering stumbled upon a cool little place called ÖMyGood! where I got an amazing croissant and coffee for cheap. I also met the really nice waitress (who smiled at me a lot and had a cool haircut) and I asked her how to get to the cathedral. She told me to take the bus because it was too far to walk, but about 15 minutes later (after a bit of a search for the bus stop), I ended up at last at "catedral."

Alexander Calder statue in the garden

This is how pretty the view was on a CLOUDY day.

I think this is a historical museum or something with the name Almundena in it.

I am officially terrible at smiling in pictures if I take them myself.

A little wandering through plazas and following some paths through a garden led me to a beautiful view of the sea even on a cloudy day like Saturday. After stopping for a few pictures, I worked my way around to the entrance to the cathedral. 

And that's just the outside... I took probably almost 100 pictures inside, and I still need to edit them, so there will be a separate post of Cathedral pictures. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. When I walked in, I skipped the first room of holy relics to get into the sanctuary. (Is that what you call it in a cathedral? UU problems.) And I almost cried it was so breathtaking. I just stood for a while, then I sat for a while, then I went back to the first room and actually walked around the whole place to look at every little thing, and all the individual chapels. It was too much for words, and I was probably there for about two hours.

Eventually I left but decided to come back for mass the next day (I know, right?) and then took some time walking around the whole outside of the building.

This is technically the front door.

After I left the cathedral, I walked back through the plaza and watched a guy played with his dog, who eventually invited me over, and we had a nice chat (in Spanish) for a while while I played with his dog. He asked why I was traveling alone and why to Mallorca on a cloudy weekend. Haha. I asked him and his friend if they knew where the Miró museum was (because I had been told it was close) but they had no idea and directed me instead to a tourist information office.

At the tourist office, I got a map! And even better actually was a little tourist guide with information about museums and sights. Based on that I decided to go next to Bellvere Castle, because I wasn't sure I'd have enough time at the museum that day and the castle wasn't open on Sunday anyway. First I sought out lunch, ate, and went to catch the bus. I had just missed the 3, but saw I could take the 46 instead. HOWEVER, what the book doesn't tell you is that the 46 is a circular line with two slightly different routes, and I, of course, got on the wrong one. So after about 45 minutes on the bus and understanding only vaguely where I was, I asked the bus driver where to get off for the castle. He directed me, and I followed signs to the grounds of the castle.

Here's the thing. The castle is in the middle of the Bellvere woods. So what the book doesn't tell you is that if you take the bus, you still have to walk about a mile (based on the time it took me) to get from outside to the castle. Through woods, where there's not really a sidewalk next to the road. Fun times. But I made it up to the castle, paid a euro (wooo student id card!) and wandered around the castle.

This is the only tower of the castle. And you can't actually go in it.

The castle is a circle?

View of the cathedral past the marina! AAAAHHH!

Look, I smiled in a picture!

Hello, self-timer. (Still not smiling.)

Scale model of what I walked through to get to the castle... I think I came from the bottom of this picture somewhere. Ridiculous.

So by the time I finished with the castle I knew I didn't really have time for anything else that day, so I just walked back out of the woods (through a different, shorter way!) and took the bus back to the hostel, where I ran into my friend again and talked for a while. He had been in Mallorca for a few days before I got there, but all he was going the whole time was a little walking around and reading on the beach. No interest really in seeing the sights, which I thought was weird, but to each his own. It did get a little annoying though when he was then teasing me for being tired, since he'd sat around all day and I'd been literally hiking through woods and having religious experiences.

Well, that's day two! Day three and cathedral pictures still to come... (This is a long process! But a good excuse to not work on my presentation that's due Tuesday, which happens to be about Gaudí.)