Back to beautiful Mallorca in Spring

We loved Mallorca so much when we first visited in 2021 so when friends asked whether we’d like to join them over the Easter weekend, we couldn’t resist. Last time, we visited in July for ten days and split our trip between the Tramuntana mountains and the south-east coast. Given this trip was in spring, we headed back to the Tramuntana mountains and stayed in Andratx. This cute little town is further west of Orient, where we stayed last time.

We made the rookie mistake of not researching Spanish Easter traditions before travelling on Good Friday. After spending the afternoon and evening in Palma, we thought we could simply get in our hire car and drive to Andratx in about 30 minutes, and settle in for a drink. We thought wrong! Andratx has one road in and out that zigzags through the town and on the night of Good Friday, a very long and slow Easter procession makes its way through the town, and we of course got stuck behind it. We tried every trick in the book to get around the procession. We initially exited the town, drove the long way around and re-entered again, thinking we could beat the procession to get to the end of the town we were staying in. This didn’t work. We then tried a sneaky manoeuvre thinking we’d just about made it to our accommodation, when we all of a sudden drove into the middle of the procession (don’t worry, it was a gap in the procession so no one was harmed)! After receiving a lot of dirty looks and doing a many points u-turn, we went back the other way and conceded to waiting for the procession to pass, finally making it to our accommodation after about 1.5 hours of driving. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this was still quite entertaining.

Stuck in Easter procession traffic in Andratx

On Saturday, we went on a road trip along the coast, stopping at some stunning scenic lookouts. I loved the lookout at Mirador de Ricardo Roca near Banyalbufar, with bright blue water and tree covered cliffs jutting into the sea. Our friends had booked a scooba diving trip in the afternoon at Port de Soller, so we headed into Soller (the old town) while they went diving. I loved Soller last time we visited. The town has a gorgeous square with a great alfresco dining atmosphere. The main draw was honestly that I wanted to go back to Ben Calcuts, the amazing shoe shop where I bought a pair of espadrilles last time. The shoes have become a wardrobe staple; they’re versatile, look great and only cost about £35. Sadly, the shop was closed, presumably for Easter, so I wasn’t able to get my hands on another pair of excellent value Espadrilles. We then took the historic tram through the sunny orange groves to relax by the beach in Port de Soller while we waited for our friends to return from diving. I did buy a set of pearl earrings from a local pearl shop, and a woven bag, so I still came away with a few treats.

I was most looking forward to a good uphill hike in Mallorca and we did exactly that on Sunday. We found a walk starting in Valldemossa, a gorgeous town we also visited last time. The walk took us up a hill behind the town, with great views on our way up and down. Near the top, we came across a strange circular stone structure, which I assumed was originally used to keep goats. Not far beyond, we found ourselves on a very steep section and I had a bit of a height-induced panic and managed to convince the group to turn back and find a different way. Thankfully, it turned out this wasn’t the path and the real way was far less scary.

At the top of the walk, we found the cave mentioned in the guide for this walk. I was surprised when we found it - it wasn’t just any old cave - it was surrounded by a big stone wall structure, steeped up the hill. The cave itself was filled with various religious icons so we haven’t quite worked out what the connection between the wall and the items inside the cave. Were the religious items there first, and the wall came second, or was this cave simply used by farmers to shelter, and pen their goats within in the stone walls? To add to the mystery, the odd animal skull had been propped up on rocks near the cave. After our walk, we had a seafood feast for dinner in Port de Andratx to farewell out friends. All the seafood in Mallorca is delicious and despite tourist prices, it’s still much better value than London.

Our last day was spent at a cooking class with Soqueta Experiences. The fact that we checked out of our accommodation in the morning and needed to carry our bags was the main reason we chose a cooking class this day, but it turned into a great experience, as most cooking classes do. It was advertised to start at 11am and finish by 3pm, but we only sat down to eat at 3pm and ended up leaving closer to 6pm. The class started with learning about Mallorcan food and tasting cheeses and cured meats. I hadn’t realised on our previous trip to Mallorca that hard chorizo isn’t local to Mallorca - the local cured meat is a softer, spreadable meat known as sobrasada.

We made three courses in the class, starting with flat breads. We learnt that tomatoes are traditionally used on flat bread when they’re in season (summer), so we made a parsley variety that involved grinding the parsley and other ingredients, and then spreading over the flat bread before baking. Our main course was a pork meatball and squid stew. I was also surprised to learn that Mallorcans store tomatoes from the previous summer, right through the winter. We used some stored tomatoes for this recipe, and made the meatballs by hand. Our dessert was flo, a minty cheesecake from Ibiza. I liked the concept of this cheesecake, but as a sweet tooth, its middle ground between sweet and savoury wasn’t quite sweet enough to satisfy me.

With very full tummies and after many glasses of wine, we were kindly offered a free lift to the airport by another couple from the cooking class. I don’t often say I want to repeatedly go back to the same place, but I’m not yet bored of Mallorca.