The remainder of the warm and sunny day we spent either by or in the infinity pool, reading and enjoying the valley and mountain scenery. It was the ideal way to rest. Dinner was on the terrace again, with excellent choices of starters, mains and desserts but none of it was really special. We felt like we have been eating too much so we just had a main course and mine was negret, a fish only caught in Mallorca, cooked with clam sauce - too rich for me.
Sep 5: After another great breakfast we set off to explore some of the wine country and villages on the way home. Firstly we went to the local market at Alaro to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Every village has a market day at least once a week so on any day it is possible to find a market somewhere in the mornings. Apart from grown produce there are local producers of cheeses, olives, sausage meats like sobrasado and others more like salami and usually a couple of stalls of clothing, underwear, shoes and kitchenware and hardware items. There may be a stall of hand made jewellery and one selling copy handbags being sold by someone from one of the African countries. Although the village will also have a supermarket it's obvious that the market is an important part of village and town life. Hooray!
As we headed for Palma, rather than use the highway we followed the route that many centuries ago was the main Roman road between Palma and the north of the island. We firstly explored Binnisalem, the main wine producing area on the island. There is a lot of modern construction taking place there which means it is not nearly as attractive as Alaro and other towns/villages, although we did find a good bakery and the area around the church and main plaza was as charming as usual.
We had a wine route guide so we knew which wineries were supposed to be open on Saturday mornings, but we should have remembered we are in Spain in the summer. After meandering around country lanes and finding a vineyard closing early for the day we headed back to a major vineyard, Jose Ferrer, where we tasted several reds, learned more about the local wines and labelling (depending on whether the wine includes varieties of grapes grown in other areas of the world, other areas of Spain or only locally) and bought a selection of reds and roses to take back to the boat.
We also drove around Consell and Santa Maria del Cami, both interesting villages historically and because of their buildings, and then took the highway for home. It was interesting to note that the morning was much cooler in the mountain area of the hotel than it was when we returned to Palma. Later in the day we needed to shop for food in the larger El Corte Ingles store because we were taking guests out on the boat the next day. If you miss the main market shopping (which closes at 2.00 pm) you can't get the sort of food I like in supermarkets (typical of most places in the world). We were very relaxed after our couple of days away and quite ready to enjoy the week ahead.
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