On Monday and Tuesday we mainly tended to boat jobs (hosing down the boat and drying it is a 3 hour job for the two of us), walked around another area of old town, relaxed and read. Tuesday night's dinner on the boat was one of our favourites - grilled marinated quail; the quails here have plenty of flesh on the legs and breast but they are only Euros 1.70 each.
We allowed Terry and Marg a relaxing afternoon on Wednesday (in fact they both had a long nanna nap) and then went to Forn for dinner in the heart of old town and enjoyed a meal of tapas, including garlic prawns, ham croquettes, grilled lamb pieces on little skewers, grilled calamari, grilled pork breast in a "secret sauce" and grilled fresh sardines.
Thursday we did lots of walking in the old town and visited the magnificent Gothic Palma Cathedral, whose sandstone walls and flying buttresses tower over the city walls. The foundation stone was laid in 1230 and work continued for 400 years to build the church which began as a demonstration of the might of Mallorca's Christian conquerors. It has one of the world's largest stained glass rose windows, allowing light to pour in at that end, and the huge columns down both sides of the long nave are ringed with wrought-iron candelabras designed by Gaudi.
Thursday night was very special because we went to a concert performed by the Balereac Symphony Orchestra at Castell de Bellver, which is a very well-preserved 14th C fortress high above Palma and surrounded by pine woods. It is a unique castle for Europe because it is perfectly circular. The concert took place in the open centre area, with the orchestra on a stage one side and the audience seated on the other. The music pieces were composed by Mendelssohn and Brahms, requiring many stringed instruments so they also had a special guest violinist who was extraordinary to listen to. It was a warm evening with a clear sky so imagine what it was like to be looking up at the Gothic arches around the balcony at the second level and then up to the starry sky above. The only mistake we made was that we forgot we were in Europe where people dress properly for such events, not like the couldn't care less jeans and t-shirt dressing in Australia these days. We had been thinking more about a casual evening picnic type performance but it was really a sophisticated event so ladies were in elegant dresses and men wore jackets or at least beautiful long-sleeved shirts. We will know to dress more appropriately next time. Before the concert began at 10.00 pm we had time to wander around the walls of the castle (with a wide deep moat between the wall and the main part of the castle) and look down on the city of Palma and the bay with hundred of yachts at the marinas along the shoreline. A couple of vineyards had wine tasting areas so we enjoyed a red before moving in to our extremely comfortable seats with padded cushions and sat in raptures for the entire concert.
As the concert season is each Thursday night in August we will try to get seats for next Thursday as well.
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