How long does it take you to organise your snaps after a successful holiday?

Clearly the answer for me is ‘too long’- but that’s because I tend to be over-exuberant with the shutter button.

I think most of us agreed that Soller was one of the most beautiful places we visited. It has a decent amount of shops and restaurants around the port, which was filled with blues and whites and shimmering waters just as we’d come to hope and even expect:

Around the bay ran a tram line- one of the oldest on the island according to Marta’s travel guide, which took you past some beautiful scenery and up the hill to the main city.

 (These two photos are stolen from Marta- Thanks Marta!)

As you can tell from my whimsical poses, I’m pretending I’m a lady from….whatever the Majorcan equivalent of ‘colonial times’ works out as. I was glad to be wearing my ‘gown’, and it is very possible that at some stage during the day Marta and I had a discussion about how we wished we had proper hair and hats to match the period feel of the train that was hurtling us through the mountains.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is us being less refined.

 (These two photos are also from Marta)

The tram ride, which is a little expensive (5 euros per person), was definitely worth it for the landscapes. I’m going to use the word picturesque. As a Perthian- coming from a city without trams, I think it’s easy to attach a certain romance to a tram ride.

The city itself was everything a tourist coming to a small spanish town could hope for! In the centre was a square, with- what else- a church as feature point, and small streets, of the narrow and winding sort, radiated from it.

 We sat in the sun, and ate freshly baked pastries, and drank freshly squeezed orange juice.

There may have also been icecream.

It was incredibly beautiful. One minute you’d be hurtling past a valley filled with houses, then you’d be in a dark tunnel, surrounded by the smell of earth, then back into the sunshine and past orange groves, or almond trees.

Again, I think it was slightly costly, but I would very much recommend it. I guess it makes more sense if you don’t have a boat, and just want to go from Palma to visit the city of Soller.

(Photo from Marta)

(Photo from Marta)

When we arrived at Palma, the train was suddenly flooded with hundreds of German tourists. We sat tight and headed back to Soller.

Back in Soller there was time to have an underwhelming lunch under the watchful eye of the cathedral, and to explore some of those narrow streets in the search of fresh produce.

… and also time for more icecream…

As we headed back to the boat, the clouds descended, and the whole scene became a lot more dramatic.

Some of our fresh produce included loquats, which I hadn’t had for ages, and which the others hadn’t seen before.

And of course some of the delicious half-moon cookie-pastry things that had become a major part of our diet. I’m not sure if I described them before- they’re basically shortbread pastry, and filled then with apricot or fig jam or sweet ricotta or something else delicious.

(Photo from Marta)

That’s them in the top right of the photo. You can also see meat pies at the bottom, made with a similar shortcrust pastry. Andy and I scoffed a couple of these on the trip, mostly because there is nothing in Germany even slighly akin to a savoury pie.

We headed back out to sea…..

…and sailed into the next port as the sun was setting.