Wednesday 21 May 2008

Happy Holiday, Rotten Weather

Well we left the UK in sweltering sunshine and arrived in Menorca to rain and more rain. We weren't too bothered though - we'd been there several times before and really just wanted a change of scenery and time to relax. On the other hand, we hadn't really counted on 4 days of rain and grey skies!


The wonderful thing about this holiday was the memory lane trip - we stayed at this exact hostel exactly 20 years ago on our very first holiday together, just 6 weeks into our relationship. We arrived to check-in and a lady came out to greet us - she took one look and started rabbiting on in rapid spanish. We recognised her easily from our first trip but it turns out - she remembered us too!

The sun did come out for the last 3 days though - we jumped on a local bus into Mahon the capital, not realising it was market day. What a lovely bonus that was. Spent a few hours wandering round the stalls but a lot of them were basic typical market stalls (not much interest for holidaymakers) and most of the others were pure tourist targetted. There were a few unique stalls in there but we ran out of time to really get down to serious shopping. Lucky really - I could easily have spent a months' wages on one stall in particular!

The following day, we hired a jeep-style vehicle and went exploring some of the smaller roads that we'd found on our last trip. This lighthouse was an old friend from 20 years ago when we were taken to a beach nearby (via a dried-up riverbed type track) but we'd not managed to find the actual lighthouse - until now. It was a wonderfully wild and desolate spot - shale/slate beds on one side of the headland and a sandstone sort of terraced/stepped landscape on the other.


We also found some lovely little beaches and coves - mostly deserted this early in the season and of course, the weather wasn't helping. I love empty beaches though so I was perfectly happy just to mooch along, take some photos and do a bit of beachcombing. This perfect little cove is near a place called Binidali and the water was this amazing blue - I'm not sure the camera has caught the vibrancy of the day but you get the idea :-)

Obviously, being a bit of a photo-nut, I've got quite a few more but I won't overdo it - I know how boring other peoples holiday photos can be (My mum often comes home with 1000+!!) so maybe I'll show you some more tomorrow. I did get some interesting abstact rock ones so if the are any rockhounds out there, maybe you can put me straight :-)

1 comment:

eyeshoot said...

It sounds (and looks) like you had a lovely time. I've never been to Menorca but have very happy memories of plenty of great times in Mallorca!

I do use the 7dayshop, and am actually waiting for an order to arrive any day now. They do the cheapest memory cards.