A Girl in the World

spain

Mallorca Top 10

April 11, 2009

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Latin mixes in the clubs. Imagine Lady Ga Ga’s Poker Face mixed with Latin beats and you can understand why we were out dancing until 5.30am every single night. It doesn’t matter the venue. If the music is good, the night can stretch for hours. And that’s exactly what happened at Moon during our first night in Palma. We were all completely exhausted. It was a Friday night (and Friday nights are always a write-off because we’re always so tired after the long work week), we’d just had dinner and were about to go back to the hotel but decided to have just ONE drink. Well, the ONE drink turned into 6 hours of dancing, drinking and inappropriate silliness.

Dancing to Latin music all night long. Because I must have been Latin in another life, anything Latin energizes me like nothing else! I don’t remember for how long, with who or to what song, but we girls spent hours and hours and hours salsa-ing our way through the night.

Wellies brunch at Puerto Portal. Puerto Portal is about 15 minutes cab ride from Palma. It’s a very posh beach town. We went for a long brunch – monk fish, banoffee pie, cappuccino and chocolate bombs – under the warm warm warm sun.

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Maria gets engaged to Pete the army boy from Seattle who is stationed in Germany. And then gets divorced. It was Maria’s birthday weekend celebration and as such, she had the free pass to do whatever she wanted, with full knowledge that we would take good care of her. Well, she got engaged to some random guy we met on Friday night and then abruptly broke it off in the cab ride home at 6am. =) He even got her a blinky ring! Poor Pete. =)

Lambrusco. Sparlking, sweet, red wine! The kind that you can drink non-stop without noticing its effects. Delicious stuff! Great with tapas!

Tapas. My favourite thing about traveling to Spain is being able to have fantastic, cheap food! RBK tapas just two blocks from our hotel was amazing. Very local, packed full of people at 1am on a Saturday night and so so cheap.

We lost a purse. A passport. A wallet. And an iPod. And an hour later we found the purse, the passport, and the wallet. The iPod and cash were gone, but at least we didn’t have to make our way to the Greek embassy in Madrid to get Maria another passport, to ensure that she could get back to work on Monday morning. Near disaster, but not quite – thankfully!

La Sue Cathedral. It’s gothic, it’s huge and it’s the only cathedral in Europe situated next to the sea. From afar, it’s extremely impressive. We sat by the wall outside the church listening to guitar music.

Acai berry fruit salad. We had this for breakfast on Saturday morning. Refreshing, great for a hangover and apparently a fantastic antioxidant for your skin.

Our lack of cultural sightseeing, in exchange for dancing, lounging, coffee-ing and sunbathing. I know that this top ten list is anything but culturally enlightening. To be honest, Mallorca didn’t turn out to be a cultural-discovery type of destination. It’s a party island and party we did. =)

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I feel like death. After 10 days of running around London on a packed agenda, going to Palma this weekend to celebrate Maria’s birthday was going to be a miracle in itself. The fact that we actually survived the last three days, after all the dancing and drinking and non-sleeping that we did, boggles my mind. It’s Monday afternoon now and I’m about to keel over in my chair. I have never been so exhausted. Ever.

my two lovelies

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I can’t pass up the opportunity to write about our latest adventure. There were four girls this time and the minute we left the office with our weekend bags, it was apparent that we looked like trouble. It dawned on me how funny we must have looked — four girls, obviously on a weekend getaway, the comfort of the girl-mob mentally to keep our spirits up and shyness suppressed. We were chattery, giggley and ready for anything.

Palma itself isn’t actually that impressive. Lots of yachts, a nice gothic cathedral along the water and great little streets in the city center that reminded me of Barri Gothic in Barcelona. It’s a place for the rich – just as Monaco is for the French, Mallorca is for the British. There were more foreigners than there were local Spanish folk and that kind of touristic feel doesn’t appeal to me very much. However, the food and the nightlife were amazing. We ate all day long and danced all night. We had no plans to see any of the sites and instead wandered the streets, shopped, lounged, took coffee breaks and basically gossiped the entire weekend.

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For dancing, we went to Moon and Level in Palma – both along Avinguda Gabriel Roca. There was a Spanish flair to many of the mixes, which made for some great Latin dancing! =) To eat, we had fantastic tapas at RBK – a very local place with wooden tables and floors, amazing kalamari and tortilla de patatas, and great sparkling red wine. Add to that some shots of rum and we were ready to celebrate Miss. Maria! On Sunday we went to Puerto Portal for a loooong brunch —- overlooking the most beautiful yachts. Very posh (which isn’t usually my style) but fantastic food and desserts.


We visited Magaluf on Sunday afternoon and everything that we’ve heard about it is true. It is a total war zone – super ugly, very British and very sleazy. Think Cancun on Spring Break. Just disgusting. Cheap, cement, ugly hotels, lots of drunk British people and dirty beaches. Thank goodness we came off season. I couldn’t imagine being there when all the high school and college kids are around. Yuck.


Anyway, the weekend was a great success. Completely exhausting, but great fun. We lost Maria’s purse (including her wallet, her passport and 200 euros cash) on Friday night but then found it again an hour later. We also met some American army boys from Seattle who are stationed in Germany and visiting the island for the weekend. So random. Oh, and I danced with a Brazilian for half the evening – not a surprise. All in all, another weekend of chaos and fun.

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On our plane ride home, Cynthia and I were marveling at how blessed we are to be living the lives that we’re living. We ride airplanes like they’re taxis.


As exhausted as I am, it’s a great day to feel thankful. =)


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Back from Mallorca

April 6, 2009

COMPLETELY destroyed from a weekend of celebrating Maria’s birthday in Palma, Spain. Updates later. When I recover from feeling like death.

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Live from Palma Mallorca

April 4, 2009

Wrecked!!! Dancing till 530am. Maria lost her purse. Then we found it.
Dancing dancing!! Four girls, one island, mojitos all night.

Saturday noon – totally wrecked!

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BCN with Maria

February 1, 2009

What a funny weekend we’ve had in Barcelona!  It has poured cats and dogs for two days straight.  My boots haven’t had a chance to dry yet and I’ll be flying back to London in two hours.  =)  What a laugh.  It has been a weekend of fantastic food, great conversation, lots and lots of sangria and so much rain!  We were silly enough to decide to take the double decker tour bus yesterday while it POURED rain on us on the top deck.  Maria lost her 10 euro package of cheese and we got soooo drunk last night at Cerveseria Catalana that we collapsed in our hotel room and didn’t wake up until 11am this morning.  =)  

I love travel with Maria.  We’re both such butterflies when it comes to agendas and planning and responsibility. Something always goes wrong, in the funniest of ways.  So fantastic.

BCN - La Boqueria market

BCN - the sangria that kicked our butts

 

Now I’m flying back to London where it’s supposed to be snowing, snowing, snowing!!!!  

THREE MORE DAYS until South American summer in Argentinaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

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Sevilla and Granada

September 12, 2007

I was in Sevilla and Granada last week for work. Absolutely gorgeous. Was out dancing till 6:30 am in Seville, two nights in a row (I must say, that’s a new record for me!), ate tapas every meal, walked the beautiful little streets and had ice cream every single day!! The Gypsy Kings played live at our conference so I was able to perfect my latin dancing!!! A few friends and I then took the train to Granada to see Le Alhambra – absolutely breathtaking. We also saw real flamenco dancing in a gypsy neighbourhood, got our Arabic names tattooed in permanent marker on our arms in some random shisha bar at 2am, danced on cobble stone streets to impromptu guitar coming from a nearby cafe and then had chicken schwarma somewhere on the way home late into the night. I consumed too many glasses of sangria and tinto verano and walked so much I couldn’t stand anymore, but overall, it was a fantastic experience. =)

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