Day 3 Rainy, But Not Lonely, Island
The forecast for Monday, 10/4, called for rain. From what I’ve gathered, Mallorca rains are similar to Florida rains; hard, but over quickly. That was not the case today. It rained for most of the day.
I started the morning with an indoor swim in the salt water pool. It’s a nice little setup with an indoor pool, fitness gym and spa area. The negative is that the 100 meter pool is a bit longer than my 100 yard pool at home, so my swim times were even slower than I’m used to!! Afterwards, we hit up breakfast and then on to some towns close by for a bit of sightseeing.
First stop, Port de Pollença, a harbor town just a 9-minute drive north of us. Ryan and I went to the bus stop that is on-site at the resort, checked the schedule and hopped on. Unfortunately, the bus headed south to start its loop, leaving our final destination as the final stop (not the next stop) of the loop. We spent the next hour on a city bus sightseeing tour seeing the best outdoor malls and doner kebab shops Mallorca has to offer. 70-minutes later we hop off the bus, and the rain comes down harder. We hustle down the road towards the harbor and into the first restaurant we could find. It happened to be Tolo’s Restaurant, a cycling hub with connections to major cyclists and their renown success for decades. It was really neat to see all of the cycling memorabilia, see fellow cyclists waiting out the rain and eating a great turkey club, with huge chunks of real turkey!
After lunch, we successfully grabbed the correct bus back to the hotel. With the rain continuing, we hooked up our computer to the TV with an HDMI cord and fired up, what else, a cycling race; Paris-Roubaix - a very famous (although I didn’t know of it) one-day cycling race which took place yesterday (10/3). The race itself is pretty interesting as about 150 pro riders ride ~180 miles, which includes 30 segments of cobblestone roads. This year was one of the first that it was raining the entire time, so riders were caked in mud and sliding all over the cobbles!
Pro Tip 1: Pack an HDMI cord on your trips to connect your computer to the TV and stream video.
Pro Tip 2: Outside of the U.S. certain online services don’t exist; ex. Peacock streaming video. You can use a VPN (virtual private network) if you have one from work. This makes it look like you’re in the U.S., like in your office, to then access those services.
After getting our riding fix, I decided to head out solo to the next town south of us, Alcúdia. This reminded me a bit of Quebec; a walled city with awesome interior roads, shops and fantastic photo opportunities. Hopefully I get to go back for a beer in the city center and a little more of a history lesson.
With a rest day today, the next several days appear to be big riding days. Tomorrow is going to be great weather and we have a big climb scheduled, so it will be the first big day!
