Today, we decided to venture beyond Palma de Mallorca since the Christmas holidays have officially passed. Originally, we planned what seemed to be a reasonable, if slightly ambitious, itinerary to visit some of Mallorca’s famous towns: Valldemossa, Deiá, Soller, Port de Soller (all to the north, each within 5 or so miles of each other), and Alcúdia (to the far east). As with all well intentioned road trip plans, reality had other ideas. However, it was still a wonderful day with many breathtaking sights.

First up, we retrieved our car – which was as vibrantly green as it was (blessedly!) compact.

Shortly thereafter, we began our adventure northward, zipping through Mallorca’s many (and I do mean many) roundabouts. Up first was Valldemossa, one of Mallorca’s – and arguably Spain’s – most beautiful towns. Nestled among the Sierra de Tramontana, it’s ~13 miles from our hotel, which translated to a ~30 minute drive. Upon arrival, it was easy to see why Valldemossa has earned its reputation – the two churches flanking the east and west ends of the town respectively have an imposing presence and the winding streets are picturesque.

Wandering through town is like walking back in time, especially with the Christmas decor adding a whimsical quality.

Sadly, most of the “attractions” (a few small museums, a garden, and the main basilica) were closed for the holiday, so we wandered and took in the sights. Thankfully, the Església de Sant Bartomeu was open and offered a couple items of intrigue, including one of the most ornate baptismal fonts I’ve seen and a fascinating mini-display of a crypt of some kind.

Then, we decided to visit one of the few bakeries that was open, C’an Molinas. They specialize in coca de potate (“potato cake”) and hand-sift the powdered sugar for each individual one as they portion them out. The cakes were soft (much less dense than previous versions we’ve tried) and lightly sweet.

As we walked through town, we noted the beautiful tiles denoting the streets – each home on the same street seemed to have a variation on the same religious themes.

Then, we went to the one open museum: the Frédéric Chopin and George Sand Museum. Located within one of the “cells” within the monastery attached to Iglesia de la Cartuja, it was a relatively small space. Fascinatingly, the museum has a variety of original and photocopied artifacts from Chopin’s life with George Sand (who, apparently, was actually a woman known for dressing as and writing under the male pseudonym).

The highlight for me was the handwritten sheet music (Chopin composed his 24 Preludes among other masterpieces here) – it’s fascinating to see how even a famed composer made errors / wrote and rewrote their own pieces. I’ll admit, seeing these made me tear up – it’s incredible seeing such famous works in their original form!

The views from Chopin’s “cell” were also incredible – I can see why he was inspired!

Then, we continued to meander back to the parking lot at the edge of town, taking in the gorgeous scenery and lovely decor.

From there, we decided to head to the next stop of the day: Deiá, a village about ~15 miles away (roughly ~2 miles). While beautiful, the road was almost entirely switchbacks and scarily narrow even in a relatively small car.

We’d heard about Deiá through the only Travel Channel / Food Network special we could find on Mallorca – which sadly was filmed and broadcast in 2002 and seemed, upon reflection, slightly out of date.

Unfortunately, almost everything in Deiá was closed (likely an extension of the Christmas holiday) so we really just: struggled to find parking (for ~15 minutes), struggled to park (~5 minutes), wandered around trying to find downtown and realized it was closer to the first two parking areas we’d passed (~10 minutes), walked to “downtown” (~10 minutes), and then finally tried to find a bathroom before continuing along our way and ended up having to buy food at one of the few open cafes (~a hour).

Pros: Deiá is nestled against the mountains in a picturesque way; cons: it really didn’t provide anything new relative to Valldemossa and the food wasn’t worth writing home about.

As we sat for our snack, we evaluated our options: Soller, while supposed to be another similarly beautiful small town, was 3.8 miles away but would require another ~35 minutes of driving through narrowing winding streets; Alcúdia, with its Roman ruins, was only an hour away, but would require driving most of the way back to Palma to connect to the main highway. We started to evaluate other options: Andratx, a major city to the east, seemed appealing – but also required us to transit through Palma.

Since most options seemed to lead to Palma and it was already getting late into the afternoon (and therefore restaurants were finishing lunch service before closing for siesta), we decided to cut our losses and head to a restaurant we’d been hoping to try: Mesón Ca´n Pedro, located about 10 minutes east of Palma in Génova.

As we waited for our check, we noticed that a bus runs between Deía, Valldemossa, and Palma despite the extremely narrow streets – I was quite happy to see the bus go by right before we exited the parking lot on our way down the mountain, as I didn’t want to pass it on our way!

Even without the bus to contend with, the mountain roads are not for the faint of heart – Mallorca is popular with bikers and they really do find their way around every switchback (as do the people walking between towns on the highway, which barely have guardrails, much less a shoulder or any kind of sidewalk). Thankfully, we made it to sea level with no incidents.

Mesón Ca´n Pedro was definitely a highlight of the Mallorcan gastronomy we’ve had a chance to try – one downfall of coming in “off” season is that many restaurants close and those on the Michelin Guide typically have limited opening hours (and, obviously, require you to venture across the island). Fortunately, Mesón Ca´n Pedro is a local spot – and it seemed like it was primarily filled with locals enjoying a post-Christmas meal together today.

They specialize in Mallorcan cuisine, so we tried a couple local favorites including:

• Pan amb oli (“pamboli”) with a fun twist – they let you crush the tomatoes and garlic right at the table
• Cargols – snails! These were definitely an acquired taste and somewhat foreign to our palettes; they had a very umami taste (almost like a shiitake mushroom) but with a bitter aftertaste and a pungent herb thrown in (I did enjoy the specialized snail-stabber that was included, though!)
• Frit Mallorquí – cubed beef sauteed with peas, onions and peppers; it was delicious and tasted like the filling of a Shepherd’s Pie but slightly lighter
• Tumbet – basically a ratatouille, but slightly lighter and without the peppers
• Paella de Marisc – lobster paella; this is apparently quite popular on the island, but much easier to look at than to eat, as we discovered

The restaurant also lets you do a Mallorcan version of “KBBQ” (aka grill it at your own table) which was fun to watch as well.

Overall, an extremely filling meal and great introduction to some of Mallorca’s classics. After dinner, we decided to drive the ~10 minutes or so down to Cala Nova, where we caught a brief view of the sunset before heading back to Palma.

Tomorrow we’re on to the next leg of our trip in Albania!