Mallorca and Barcelona Recap
- Only A Plane Away
- Jul 20, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 21, 2019
We visited both Mallorca and Barcelona as stops on our Mediterranean cruise. We boarded the MSC Seaview from Civitavecchia, about an hour outside of Rome. The process of getting to the cruise ship was a bit hectic, but once we boarded, things went more smoothly. Since most of the ports in the Mediterranean are close together, we had a different port city every day. Our second port was Palma de Mallorca.
Mallorca is a relatively small island off of the East coast of Spain. It is part of Spain's Balearic Island chain (as well as Menorca and Ibiza). Mallorca is the largest of the islands and Palma is its capital.
We opted not to book an excursion through MSC, and decided to do a city tour on our own. Once we disembarked the ship, we took a quick shuttle into town and right in front of the drop off point was a beautiful and massive church atop a large hill.
The church is called Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma or often just Palma Cathedral or La Seu. Built by the Crown of Aragon on the site of a Moorish-era mosque. The cathedral is 121 meters long, 55 meters wide and its nave is 44 meters tall, making it one of the highest in all of the Gothic cathedrals. (By way of comparison, the height of the central nave reaches 33m in Notre Dame.)
Unfortunately the interior was closed for renovations during our visit. It was still very cool to see it from the outside though.
We walked through the city center a bit and did some shopping including buying some pearls which are famous in Mallorca. Afterward, we decided to do one of the hop-on-hop-off buses to check out a bit more of the city.
The main site we wanted to check out was Castell de Bellver which is located a bit outside of the city. It was built in the 14th century for King James II and is one of the few circular castles in Europe.
It's located atop a large hill and offers great views of Palma and much of the island. We walked around the castle a bit and took in the great views before jumping back on the bus to see a bit more of the city.
We got off the bus back at the city center and were in search of a good tapas restaurant for dinner. Pro-Tip...Eat tapas when you're in Spain! We settled on a small little place called OMBU. It turned out to be a great choice, and we all agreed it was the best meal of the trip, and it was honestly one of the best meals that we've ever had. The pork was especially good and they did lots of interesting takes on traditional dishes. We ate so fast though, we forgot to take any pictures of the actual food!
After dinner, we walked around a bit more to get a few evening snapshots. There is always something magical about the way a city looks at dusk, and this was one of the only ports that we would be able to stay off of the ship late enough to enjoy it. We then caught the shuttle back to the ship to get some rest before heading to Barcelona the next day.
Originally for Barcelona, we did book our excursion through MSC and were pretty bummed to find out our excursion to Montserrat was cancelled. We had somewhat limited options trying to book the day before, so we opted for a city tour.
The tour started out a bit slow going by a few sites including the site of the 1992 Olympics and then to a place called Spanish Village or Poble Espanyol. It is an open-air architectural museum that was built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. It consists of 117 full-scale buildings, which recreate Spanish villages, so it's a good way to see the different architectural styles from all over Spain.
The next stop was to Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia or Barcelona Cathedral in the Gothic Quarter. It is a very beautiful church which we took in from the outside because we didn't have time to enter.
The square outside of the cathedral, called Plaça Nova, had lots of buskers and the letters that spelled out "Barcino" which was the Roman name for the city.
There is also a Picasso mural depicting the nativity scene on one of the buildings in the square.
Our tour guide took us through more of the Gothic Quarter and explained to us that it's really all a fake. Many of the details were actually added in the 19th and 20th centuries, much of it for the 1929 International Exposition. The Gothic Quarter has many narrow streets and was very crowded so it was a bit overwhelming at times, but it was still very beautiful.
Some of the Roman ruins also lie within the Gothic Quarter and are actually within the courtyard of an apartment building. It's quite an odd site to behold. There is also a "Roman wall" that is part of an old Roman aqueduct and leads back up to Plaça Nova.
Our last stop on the guided tour was The Temple de la Sagrada Família (more commonly known as La Sagrada Familia), the cathedral of famous and beloved Catalan architect, Antoni Gaudí. Construction of Sagrada Família began under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar in 1882, but in 1883 he resigned and Gaudí took over. However, Gauidí died in 1926 before the completion of the church. In fact, the cathedral is still not complete. They plan to finish completion in 2026, on the 100th anniversary of Gaudí's passing.
We were only able to tour the exterior, but we definitely want to plan a trip to go back and see the interior and see it when it's fully complete as well.
We then headed back to a drop off point near the Christopher Columbus monument. We decided to walk from there up the very crowded Las Ramblas, a tree-lined pedestrian street that stretches for 1.2 kilometres from the Christopher Columbus monument to the Gothic Quarter. We were warned of pick-pockets in the area, so those with backpacks wore them in the front and we all tried to stay very aware of our surroundings.
We ended our time in Barcelona with a bit of shopping, a quick bite to eat, and some sangria before heading back to the ship.
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