Menorca

To be at the airport at 8am last Friday, I had to wake up at 6:30, leave the residence by 7 and take 2 trains and 1 bus.  One of the trains stopped underground for about 10 minutes for an unknown reason, so I was a little late.  But our flight wasn't until 10am, so it didn't matter anyway.  After we got into the terminal, the flight monitors told us our flight was delayed 2 hours.... fabulous.  At least they gave us a meal ticket for a free breakfast! (Croissant and orange juice).  Finally we got on the plane and the pilot told us that the long flight delay was due to a bird who found its way into the cargo hold.  Haha- okay I forgive Spainair because it's one of the funniest reasons I've heard for a flight delay.  In addition to the free breakfast at the airport, I was easily occupied by a Haagen-Dazs store and reading Harry Potter #1 in Spanish.

The flight was only 30 minutes.  I swear I never even heard the stewardess say it was okay to turn on electronic devices... and the drink cart only made it halfway through the rows.  After arriving in Menorca, we took a 45 minute bus ride to the other side of the island to check in at our hotel.

We had a couple hours to eat lunch on our own... even though it was already 4 or 5 pm (I had a cheese bocadillo and peach juice)... and then we were off to our first "guided tour" of the Ciutadella city -- the area in Menorca where we were staying.  Here's the Catedral de Menorca (inside and out):

Here's a harbor just before sunset.

Our tour guide was the same teacher as the "History and Culture" section of the proseminar, Toni Luna.  He's the one who everyone in the group is looking at in the picture below.  And he brought along his wife who is the one with the purple jacket and backpack.

Here are some more sights we came across on the tour:

After the tour we had a couple hours to wander around before the 8:30pm dinner back at the hotel.  Here's the street scene:

Besides beaches and cheese, Menorca is thirdly most famous for ensaimadas which are a pastry shaped like a spiral, but they taste like a cross between an elephant ear and a croissant, and have a very fluffy texture.  In the picture below of a pastry shop, the ensaimadas are on the upper right corner.

Wandering around, a friend and I walked into an underwear shop (because it had a "liquidation" sign out front, not necessarily because it sold underwear) and we started to chat with the shopkeeper.  My friend studies linguistics, so she tried to talk to the shop owner in Catalan.  The shop owner informed us that she does not speak Catalan, but rather Menorquín, a dialect of Catalan.  So we ended up talking with the owner for about 30 minutes (in a mix of Menorquín, Catalan, and Castellano) about why we're in Barcelona and she told us that we should come back to Menorca in June because there's a lot more to do.  As we were about to leave, she gave us a free pair of socks!  I picked out a green pair with yellow and pink stripes and diamonds.  YAY for cultural exchanges!  Here's a photo of my friend, Siena, in the shop with the owner:

One of the things that intrigued me about Menorca was the color and texture of the buildings.  According to Toni Luna, each building doesn't have a choice for which color they can paint their outside walls-- the city chooses for them so that the city-scape is more aesthetically pleasing.  Here are some photos of the colors and textures of Menorca:

Dinner at the hotel involved WAY too much food.  It was a buffet-- and of course when everything at the buffet looks delicious, a little bit of everything ends up on my plate... as well as plate #2... and plate #3 for all the different desserts...  I would consider this weekend a weekend of food.  We ate 2 dinners at the hotel (Friday and Saturday night) and then 2 breakfasts (Saturday and Sunday morning).  The breakfast buffets had just as much food, if not more, than the dinner buffets.  Too much food!  But also very satisfying...

The next day, Saturday, we had to wake up early to go on a bike ride at 9:15am.  On our itinerary it was listed as a tour through a few places in Menorca with mountain bikes.  I figured that the ride would be very tame because we had about 40 people in our group and some people had little to no experience shifting gears.  Here we are saddling up: (we also got free water bottles!)

Because of the supposed "easy" bike ride and only taking a small carry-on bag with me for the weekend, I only brought one pair of pants-- jeans.  After 3 days of touring and a relaxing bike ride, what's the worst that could happen, right?  Well, the first third of the bike ride was lovely... riding by farms where pigs, sheep, and cows were grazing...

Then we had a short 15 minute break and mini-tour of Son Catlar, a Bronze Age prehistoric village that "probably grew to its present size just prior to the Roman conquest of Menorca in the 3rd-2nd century BC, when a series of square towers were added on to the 870 m long rampart that encloses this settlement.  The taula (altar), with its religious sanctuary, takes up a central position within the village, though the large, rectangular stone that should cap it now lies fragmented within the sactuary [...] It seems likely that this urban centre continued in use until at least the final stages of the Roman Empire." This quote is from a sign just outside the "city" which basically means "Here are some VERY OLD ROCKS." (Even though all rocks are old, these rocks deserve caps lock status, I guess).

And some awesome yellow moss on a rock:

Next we rode a little more until we came upon a gorgeous beach called Platja des Banyul in the Platges de Son Saura.  The beach was full of beautiful white sand and strange-looking organic balls that made the beach very squishy to walk on.  These balls, apparently, are a byproduct from Neptune Grass and their presence means that the beach is healthy.

This beach marked our halfway point, but little did we know the way back was going to be MUCH more difficult that the way there.  The bike guides warned us that there would be a "few" rocks... but looking back that was certainly an under exaggeration.  There were LOTS of rocks and LOTS of unavoidable muddy puddles.  Here's what my bike and shoes looked like midway through the rock/mud adventure:

Basically, I really wish I had worn bike pants because many muscles were sore for a few days after and those shoes and those jeans were the only pair I had that weekend.  A lot of people complained and whenever we stopped, we'd have to wait a long time for the more inexperienced bikers in the back to catch up.  However, it was totally worth it because we got to witness some amazing views.

Here's the beautiful-colored mud we had to go through.  Imagine this mud on a one person-wide hiking path and in between the mud puddles imagine a lot of rocks the size of beach balls... that's about what we had to endure for the second half of the ride.

After the bike ride, we had a couple hours of free time to relax, grab a bite to eat for lunch, and take showers.  I took a shower, washed the bottom of my jeans with a washcloth and hand soap in the sink, dried the jeans with a hairdryer, then ate a bocadillo (sandwich) at a cafe nearby.

Next we drove about 40 minutes to see another village with old rocks.  This one is called the "Torre d'en Galmés" settlement.  According to a sign, it's a "Talayotic era settlement (1300BC- 123BC), located on a promontory and its hillsides, with a great view of the sea.  Owing to its area, it is considered one of the largest in the entire island."  We arrived at the settlement just after sunset and walked around for 30 minutes until it because too dark.

Another 40 minute bus ride back to the hotel and dinner, again, was an insane buffet and needless to say I went to sleep very tired and very full.

The next morning we had to wake up early again so that we could have a tour of the fortress of Isabel II on La Mola in Mahon Harbour (on the other side of the island from our hotel).  Again, according to a sign, it was "built between 1848 and 1875 after a lot of pressure by the British, who were threatening to return to the island in order to use it as a base in their defensive operations against the French.  These two countries were disputing naval control of the Mediterranean."  On Sunday it was cold, rainy, and super windy so this visit was made as short as possibly and we mostly kept inside.

After the cold tour, we had an extended lunch at a restaurant called La Minerva.  It was super fancy!  Our place settings had 3 plates stacked one on top of the other.  We thought this was just for show, but no--- we had a 4-course meal ahead of us.  First was appetizers, more like tapas that consisted of bread with some tomato/meat sauce on top, small pieces of whitefish (that weren't de-boned), and eggplant with cheese.  For course number two, we had seafood paella.  About halfway through the paella, I became full and made Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarepants with the rest of my rice.  I expected dessert to be next, but no-- we got a plate of lamb with potatoes.  Then finally dessert which was "cheese cream" with burnt sugar on top.  It tasted really weird and I don't recommend it to anyone.  I guess it's sort of like cheese ice-cream, if such a thing existed, except not sweet.  I scraped the burnt sugar off the top and left it at that.

And then we were off to the airport!  Luckily there were no flight delays this time.  As soon as I got back to Barcelona (after the bus and two trains) I went right to sleep.