Blog Ten: Sol del Este, Menorca, Spain
[20-30 October]
It’s a 05:00am start from Bonifacio, as we are picked up from our hotel by a driver to take us to the very basic airport at Figari. The driver covers the distance at breakneck speed, naturally, reassuringly indicating that whilst there are few cars on the road at this hour, the main problem is presented by encountering wild boar or wild cows wandering on the road in the dark. We spend the trip scanning the roadside for possible incursions by kamikaze beasts.
Our flight from Figari in Corsica, via Bordeaux, to Mahon arrives on time and we clear Menorca airport quickly and pick up our hire car. We are staying for one night at the Barcelo Hamilton hotel, which is just along the road from La Gardenia, in Es Castell. We arrive just behind a large party of Spanish folk who are being greeted at Reception with glasses of cava and much welcoming chat. It takes us half an hour to get checked in.
We arrive around the corner in Calas Fonts for a lovely dinner in Sa Punta with Pauline (Fiona’s sister), and her partner Paul, with seven minutes to spare. Not too bad, I suppose – it has taken us nearly six weeks to get here.
We go on an unusual boat trip from Mahon harbour, on the Pascual Flores, an old salt boat launched in 1917, which was discovered mouldering in a port on the Welsh coast, but has now been fully restored. The weather is glorious and we spend three hours sailing out of Mahon harbour, pottering around on the high seas, then sailing back in. The part of the trip outside the harbour is under sail only, which is fantastic – just enough wind to fill the sails, but not too rock and rolly. The crew are mostly in their late teens with a couple of 20-somethings in charge. They work incredibly hard in teams to perform the tough manual labour required to raise all the huge sails, which takes around thirty minutes in total, and then they have to take them down again as we come back into port!
Thanks to the wonderful Marine Traffic app that Pauline has shown to Fiona, we know that just outside the harbour mouth lurks the MSC Orchestra, at anchor off the La Mola headland, as it is presumably too large to come right into the cruise ship terminal. We sail by it as it ferries endless boatloads of people ashore in tenders so that they can visit Mahon.
Our own Mediterranean cruise earlier on this trip was on one of the Orchestra’s sister ships the MSC Fantasia. There is a satisfying resonance for us from the presence of the Orchestra towards the end of our current trip – back in 2020, it was the ship on which we had booked a cruise to South America, which fell victim to the pandemic. Five iterations of the cruise later, we accepted the Eastern Mediterranean cruise on the Fantasia, so there is a certain pleasing symmetry to events.
We also take a look around two very interesting replicas of Spanish galleons which are visiting Mahon. The original of one of these ships was the first to circumnavigate the globe. The day is very hot and humid and the temperature seems to rise by about 10 degrees with each deck we descend on these impressive ships, whose next port of call is Valencia.
It’s Saturday evening, which we always try to spend in the buzzing city of Mahon, so we take the new lift up the cliffside from the port and start to climb the steep streets towards the cathedral. We are heading for a bar/restaurant we know quite well and I can already taste the large gin and tonic, with copious ice, which awaits. We turn the final corner to see to our dismay that La Bodega is closed and shuttered. There are no chairs and no tables in their normal places in the square in front of the cathedral.
There is, however, a black and white cow in a small pen. And a police officer. Fiona catches up with me. “Oh God, you were being serious. There actually is a cow,” she observes. “And there’s a policeman guarding it.” There appears to have been some sort of agricultural show in the square, which is now winding down. No other livestock are in evidence.
An elderly lady strolls past pushing an alert looking West Highland Terrier in a pink pram. We look around, wondering if we have stumbled into an episode of Dr. Who. Disoriented, we flop into chairs at the nearest bar, where we spend the rest of the evening eating surprisingly good traditional tapas and discovering a new sparkling Spanish wine.
The weather in Menorca is surprisingly hot and humid for mid-late October. We have been so fortunate on this trip, with only really two days of rain in nearly seven weeks. Even the locals are commenting on the extended summer and the high temperatures. The heat and humidity are a bit sapping, so we get out on the water at every opportunity.
A trip across the harbour on the Yellow Catamaran takes us once again to Isla del Rey, with its restored military hospital, and the Hauser and Wirth Gallery, gardens and sculpture trail. Although the beautiful gallery space is lovely and cool, we don’t linger for too long, as the exhibition is a bit repetitive and, um, boring really. This gives us more time to sit outside the island’s La Cantina restaurant, under the tree cover which gives us some shade, for a long and leisurely lunch in the balmy conditions.
We have two nice excursions to Es Castell and Es Grau for lunch with our friend Jean, who now lives permanently in Cala’n Porter, about 30 minutes from Sol del Este – Jean was instrumental in us first visiting Menorca for a family holiday at Binixica way back in 1993, and in us learning of La Gardenia, where she used to have an apartment for a number of years.
Our final evening here is traditionally spent up the road at Ignacio’s – the Cafeteria Sol del Este. Unfortunately, he has closed early for the season. However, there is the opportunity to watch a basketball match at the Pavello, for the first time since 2019!
Hestia Menorca has had a good start to the season in Spain’s third division, the LEB Plata, and the team is going for its fifth win in a row, back finally at its home arena, after the roof had sprung a leak. Fiona has become a fan too, and we enjoy a comprehensive home win over Brisasol CB Salou. Definitely a big improvement on watching Menorca’s matches from afar, on YouTube and Canal+, over the past three years!
That makes for a pretty good send off for a pretty fabulous trip all round. Home tomorrow, to a huge temperature drop, no sunshine and the dark nights fair drawing in….
My dozen favourite images from our stay in La Gardenia, Sol del Este, are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image. If you’re using a mobile phone, turn your screen sideways to see the bigger image to best effect.
Image Gallery
