Stuffed Eyes

Goodbye Andalucia … Hello Balearics

It’s been a whirlwind of activity since we arrived. Hell it was a whirlwind of activity just to leave. Those are for other posts written across other days. For now, here is a compilation of some of the smaller adventures and experiences that we have had.

Some first impressions:

It’s humid. This doesn’t surprise us but it is an adjustment. It used to be so dry that mosquitoes didn’t exist in Martos and flies would buzz your eyeballs trying to get the liquid from them. It was super dry. Here, it is so very wet. There are mosquitoes everywhere. Nothing dries. Cereal comes pre-soggy.

There aren’t seagulls – we aren’t close enough to the sea. We’re about 6 miles away but I was honestly hoping to throw my window open and be bombarded by the laughter of laughing gulls.

Some things really are more expensive but for the most part things on on par. Everyone warned us it would be really expensive. Yeah, some things are. Other things are the same. It’s not catastrophically expensive.

All the signs are in German and English so I’m never going to finish learning Spanish.

Ha! Just kidding the rest of the signs (the most important signs) are in Catalan and are thus nearly-unreadable to us.

There really are a lot of tourists here. Even in little old Manacor which was voted the worst city on the island. We don’t have many tourist attractions – yet we attract them. About every third person we see is a German. This is not an exaggeration.

There are coach buses everywhere. Every couple minutes one drives by. Taking tourists around the island (they don’t stop in Manacor, though).

There are windmills everywhere.

Like literally everywhere. There’s an abandoned one in front of our apartment.

What have we been up to?

Well we moved here. It took only an hour of flight time which was insane (for us). Usually when we move it involves a 14 hour flight and is emotionally and circadian rhythm destroying. This was a hop, skip, and a jump. 

We stayed in an Airbnb which wasn’t nearly as awesome as the last one. We were good friends with the last host, we got drunk with him and his boyfriend and stayed out at a bar all night. This host was very reserved and tried very hard to keep her new puppy away from us. She couldn’t though so we snuggled Chester as often as we could.

We apartment hunted (once). Got an apartment. Then began some furniture shopping.

We bought a TV and walked it over a mile back home.

It was about to rain so we had to power-walk the TV home.

Then we bought a desk (which is actually patio furniture) and walked that 3 miles home.

We took a walk and saw the true beauty of our new hometown.

Our most famous attraction is the cathedral.

And that Rafa Nadal (the tennis player) is from here. He has a tennis school and an “experience” museum. We have yet to visit.

Also it’s famous for pearls – artificial pearls. We also have yet to go to the factory.

We took a big ol’ walk to a nearby “cala” or inlet.

Then we walked along a coastal route to the next city over.

Then walked halfway home before just breaking down and taking the bus.

We sauntered around our local museum. Sadly, it was all in Catalan (but did have some printed leaflets in English).

 

For now let’s leave it at that. We will talk about our apartment and our schools sometime in the near future, so don’t worry!