(From Brian)
Monday morning was the end of our time in Barcelona but only a third of the journey that was our honeymoon. Having packed the night before we were able to make a quick exit, arrive early to the airport and do a little shopping in the duty free shop. Lindsay reunited with her old friend Giant Mentos for a photo opp and we picked up an FC Barcelona lanyard to add to our wall at home of major sporting event memorabilia. We intend to get something from the Tour de France to put in it.
The gate system at the Barca airport seems better than ours as long as the customers can be patient and competent. Flights are not assigned to a specific gate until the plane arrives. Instead there are sections with about 10 gates that each flight can fall in to. When the plane comes in, it is assigned an actual gate. This way there are no delays caused for later flights because some earlier flight was delayed at that gate. It probably also cuts down on annoying questions for the gate attendants.
We flew Air Berlin and our flight to the island of Mallorca was only about 50 minutes and took us over the center of the island. It looked like a lot of farmland and very old structures. We landed, got our bags and headed out to the rental car stand.
Lindsay suggested getting GPS but I had already printed out directions for the places we planned on driving to so “we” took the chance on getting by despite road signs being in a different language. This would turn out to be a poor choice and result in adding some extra adventure so next time we will get the GPS.
We got our Mercedes A class car which is pretty small (medium sized by island standards as we would discover the cars must be small to fit on some of the streets) and started to figure out what the street signs mean using the tried and true method of trial by fire - we got on the freeway. It was pretty easy to find our hotel, though street names are printed only on the sides of buildings at the intersections so we had to wing it for finding when to turn. Our hotel, Nixe Palace, is a few miles outside of the main city of Palma and built into the mountain over a small beach. After successfully navigating our way to the hotel and leaving the car with the doorman, we went into the hotel and got our first glimpse of the incredible view that awaited us. When walking in to the hotel all you can see is the Mediterranean Sea through the floor to ceiling windows in the hotel lobby.
Everyone at the hotel seemed to speak good English so we wouldn't have any problems finding our way around. That good English came in handy as we checked in and learned that our travel agent had hit a new low…Our reservation was made for a sunrise room (which is facing away from the water overlooking the street) with no balcony and two twin beds. This was not a mistake on the part of the hotel… the actual reservation was made with a note to have two twin beds. The lady at check-in said she expected up to three oceanside rooms to become available the next day so she would change us over and move all of our stuff to the best option available the next day…
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