I never understood people that shake their computers or throw their phones in a fit of rage when theyre not doing what theyre supposed to do... But now I do. I had drafted 3 masssiiiiivvveee posts on my phone during the last 3 weeks while in airports or on buses or trains, with the intention of posting them up when I got wifi. But unfortunately my 'Blogger' app wasn't up to date on my Galaxy.... so none of the posts saved properly. And I can't open them... So now I have to start from scratch and cover my first week in London, and my trips to Majorca, Madrid, Barcelona & Lisbon.
Ive already forgotten a lot..
My first week in London... I had my Britbound appointment to meet a few other new expats, get my national insurance number sorted, get some info on life in London and what to expect etc etc. Got my (empty) bank account up & running.. Registered with a few recruitment agencies and introduced myself to a few contacts from back home. Walked all over the place, got lost a little bit (in a good way), joined 2 free running/fitness groups (free bootcamp on Saturdays & Sundays...wtf?!) so met a few coolkids through that. Basically a full week of running around to different appointments and applying for every job possible. Not sure if I´ve mentioned, but Im living like 200m from Brick Lane.. so Ive promised myself that as soon as I get a job I´m gonna be going out for dinner there to celebrate... nom nom nom. Hayls & Jeff flew in on Wednesday so we had drinks & dinner most nights, went to London zoo on the Friday (20x better than Perth Zoo might I add..), bootcamp on Saturday morning, then packed and headed back out to Gatwick to fly out to my first stop ( Majorca ) with Hayley n Jeff...
First mission..
We land in Majorca at about 9pm and go pick up our hire car.. We were staying in this place called Cala Pi (rough translation - woop woop) so had a 30km (ish) drive from Palma to our hotel. Of the 3 of us, Im the one with the international drivers licence. Which meant I was the one responsible for getting us from Palma to Cala Pi, in the dark, driving on the wrong side of the road, in a manual (which means gear changes with my right hand), with no real map & no street lights... alive. You dont really realise how fast 100km is when youre basically learning to drive all over again. But with a few casual drifts onto the right side of the road, and some confusing roundabout incidents, and me completely mixing up my lefts & rights, we made it there. But if I hadn´t remembered the tip 'righty tighty lefty loosey' for turning corners, we might not have made it haha. Cudos to me.
Our hotel wasnt bad at all.. We had a 2 bedroom apartment on the 2nd (top) floor so we had a rooftop terrace and a bit of a view. There was a beautiful little cove beach behind the hotel that was pretty much the hotels private beach. A big old lighthouse on the coast on a cliff that dropped down to the ocean. The views were beautiful.
Trying to find things to do around our area was a bit of a struggle.. We were about 40mins from palma town (we went into town twice but once being the Sunday and everything was closed). Me being a bit of an alcoholic noticed a vineyard on the way back from Palma & it got me thinking about wine, so I looked up a winetour company and we did a gourmet tour. For €45 we got picked up and dropped off (45mins each way!) and toured 3 wineries (including t he oldest one in Majorca) and we actually got to tour through the operational side where the grapes are cleaned and the wine's aged and bottled and all that jazz.. A lot more informative than what you get back home. (did you know that the only red wine is red is because they leave the skin on?? So you can actually make white wine from red grapes). the wines were pretty much all amazing, the food was yuuuuum and wow ive never seen so many bottles of wine in my life. Our driver was incredibly helpful and gave us advice on the very few places we could eat around Cala Pi (my god, the grilled fish we had on our last night at his recommended restaurant was delish !!)
The whole time we were there I'd wanted to go hiking. I'd heard that the mountains of Majorca are brilliant for hiking especially as some of them are coastal so the views would be pretty special. But unfortunately we were staying south east of palma at the bottom of the island....and the mountains were up in the north. So to save myself getting lost driving the 2 or 3 hours out to the mountains and then most likely getting lost in the wilderness, I dragged Hayley & Jeff along on a coasteering excursion :) for €55 we got picked up & dropped off (almost 2 hours each way!) and went out cliff jumping, climbing, swimming, abseiling & caving. Definitely worth it! The coast is beauuuuutiful and the green glow of the ocean in the underwater caves made me wish I had a waterproof camera. It was so surreal. The cliff jumping sent my legs to jelly and my heart to my throat but well it was pretty cool!
Aside from the wine tour and the coasteering we literally spent the week eating, drinking, relaxing, & tanning (my mid-stomach tan line from highwaisted bikini is back in action). We got a tad lost on the way back to the airport and did about 5 u-turns before we found the right turn off for our car return place. Finally made it to the airport.. Next stop - Barcelonaaaaaa :D
✌
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