Day 7 – final day, Cruising Solo, Palma de Mallorca

Day 7 – final day, Cruising Solo, Palma de Mallorca, by DreamFinder Travel Agent Kim Merrill

Palma was a brand new port for me, so I have been eagerly awaiting the last day of the cruise (that just sounds so wrong to say!).  Our ship was not scheduled to dock until 1pm, so my intent was to sleep in a bit.  Well, that really didn’t happen, as we had a bit in the way of “turbulence” overnight and I woke up fairly frequently.  I gave up trying to sleep around 7am and had breakfast and then headed to the gym.

I have mentioned before how big and uncrowded the gym was, but today, it finally had a significant amount of people in it.  However, even so there were still plenty of cardio machines available and there was no overt hogging of the weights.  I was able to watch the sail in to the port from the treadmill (we arrived about 90 minutes early).  The scenery was spectacular. (Traveling solo has its benefits, as I didn't have to rush back to others, and I could enjoy the view there. )

 

I wanted to see what happened if I got off the ship without the shuttle ticket pre-purchased to see if there was a price variation as there was in Livorno (I had Euro to cover any situation).  To my surprise, not only was it the same price, they actually just charged it to my stateroom account.  I did NOT see that coming, it was incredibly convenient.   We received big blue stickers that were placed on our key cards good for all-day round trip access. 

The shuttle ride not only took us out of the port area, but directly across the harbor to the old town.  This would not be a quick easy walk, so be sure to factor in the cost of the ticket to your budget.  There were free maps again, so I made sure to grab one and I walked this route:

What you don’t see off on the left of the image was the jog I made over to the Hard Rock Café in Palma to pick up pins for my pin-obsessed friends (I believe I actually made someone’s very chaotic day).  It was also a great spot to get a quick drink before walking back to the shuttle (€3.65 for a glass of house white, dry).  But I digress, that was the end of the 3.89-mile walk.

I pretty well stuck to the path outlined in red, and was able to hit most of the landmarks shown. The Palacio de la Almundaina was the big draw to the old town:

All along the walk were many historical monuments and churches.  The walking route was mainly along shopping streets.  What I mean by this is that there are plazas linked by street after street of stores.  They were a mix of local and internationally recognized stores, with a big mix of cultures all intermixed together.

They also have a “La Rambla” in Palma, but it is very unlike Barcelona’s version.  This one is a beautiful, relaxing, tree-lined street with multiple flower vendors:

When I deviated from the walking path to head to the Hard Rock Café,

 I was rewarded with these views:

    
The architecture here was simply lovely, and my pictures cannot do the views justice, it was stunning.  More pictures will be posted on my Facebook page.

After hitting all of the places I wanted to see I made my way back to the shuttle and headed back onto the ship.  I arranged some packing so that I could be back on deck for our 8pm departure.  It was just such a beautiful port and I wanted to be sure to watch sailing away.

As my solo series is completed with the posting of this blog (though my travels are not), I wanted to say a few things about the debarkation process.  The ship was scheduled to dock about 5:30am.  We were there prior to that actually, and I was able to get up, have breakfast, and walked off of the ship with my luggage by 7am.  I actually sat there in the port building for a while because there WAS NO ISSUE getting out of there and the transfer I had scheduled had not yet arrived.  When I did get the notification that the driver was on his way, I walked outside and he was literally RIGHT THERE…no walk to a remote spot.  It was fantastic!  I have only ever been to this port on a ship where literally everyone was getting off.  It was very different this time and more relaxed with this sailing since only a portion of the passengers were getting off that day.

Thank you for following along with my travels!  I’m not going to be doing any more live blogging with this trip, but I will likely have some content after a visit to Disneyland Paris and Normandy.  Please stay tuned! Until next time….