20241201 Seabourn Sojourn Grand Africa Cruise Day 6/96 - Palma de Mallorca - Farewell Europe

Grand Africa Cruise Trip Day 6/96 - Palma de Mallorca touring

Today, we arrived at our first port of this 90-day cruise - Palma de Mallorca, Spain. This is our third visit to Palma, so we were pretty familiar with the area.

We ate breakfast and took a look around from our balcony.

Our plan today was the only tour that didn't get canceled - a bus tour of the city and a Flamenco show. We got on the first of two tour buses for this tour. We headed out of the port for the tour.

Porto Pí Lighthouse - the third oldest operating lighthouse in the world

Porto Pi Harbor sundial

Canons that guarded the city

Palma has windmills - who knew - it's almost like we're in Kinderdjik

La Lonja Building

Ramon Llull Memorial 

 Royal Palace of La Almudaina (left) and Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma (right)

Sphinx statue in the street "Passeig des born" 

Bellver Castle

After cruising around the city, and taking in the sights, we headed for the main stop on this tour, a Flamenco show.

Ruycal Restaurant - the performance venue

They served tapas, red wine, water, and Sangria

A trio of dancers started performing traditional dances

An extremely talented guitarist joined the show and wowed everyone with his guitar skills

Once the show was over, we rode the bus back to the ship.

Seabourn had a continuous shuttle bus running back to the cathedral. We got off the tour bus, hopped on the shuttle bus, and went back into town. We wandered around, checking out the pearl shops, but didn't find anything that screamed, "Buy me".

Reina Square

Another look at the Sphynx

Nice knockers!

Back at the cathedral

With our fruitless search for pearls completed (Arlona wanted a bracelet to match a set she already has, but it doesn't exist), we caught the shuttle and headed back to the ship.

This sculpture is down the hall from our room

A nice bowl of fruit was waiting for us upon our return

The phone rang shortly after we got back to the room. We were invited to a hosted dinner at 7:00. Our host, Amber, was one of the singers on the ship. We said that we'd attend so, *boom*, we had dinner plans. But, before that, we had an invitation to a gathering for new Seabourn cruisers at 5:30. The event was held in The Club on deck 5 aft. They had drinks and light appetizers and introduced the key personnel we would likely interact with. It was designed as a thank-you for choosing Seabourn and a nice touch, even if it was a little cheesy.

We spent time chatting with the couple we had dinner with last night, which was nice. We hung out until dinner and headed to the restaurant for our hosted meal. We met Amber, a singer on board, from Iowa. We had eight people at the table, another couple and three single women, plus Amber. It was an enjoyable time, albeit somewhat protracted as the service was extremely slow. Still, the spirited conversation helped to pass the time. We wrapped up dinner at about 9:25 (did I mention it was looooonnnng?) and all headed on our own way.

We came to the room and I put this blog entry together. Tomorrow is a sea day so we'll check out the daily activities and see how we will spend all our sea days on this voyage.