Palma de Mallorca; Thursday, 14 March, 2013

After a decent night’s sleep, helped by not having the sound of a dripping toilet filling the room, and a quick breakfast, I headed out of the hotel and over to the airport. Having stayed overnight near the hotel, and given it was City, which prides itself on its short check-in times, I left it quite late so it was only 45 minutes before the flight that I dropped my bags and joined the incredibly long queue for security.

Thankfully, the queue did move relatively quickly, so that I was sitting in the lounge 20 minutes before the planned departure time, and early enough to see the nine (yes they were that specific) minute delay go onto the flight.

With a quick boarding we ended up pushing back just on nine minutes late and headed out for one of the world’s most impressive take-offs over the Thames, Docklands and City of London. After some bumpiness over the Thames estuary we settled into the flight with a full cooked breakfast, which thankfully had all been cleared away again when, somewhere over the Pyrenees we hit some really bad turbulence which had everyone diving for the nearest seat if they were stood up.

The worst only lasted a few seconds and it couldn’t have been more than about 5 minutes of bouncing around, but it felt like a lot longer. We were all quite glad when the captain announced we were on our descent into Palma and would be on the ground within 20 minutes.

After a painfully slow queue for passports and a long walk through the airport I arrived at the baggage belts to see my luggage already coming round, so it was a quick collect and through to the bus into town.

Having dropped off my stuff at the hotel I headed back out, starting by walking into town along the sea front and then, near the cathedral, picking up the open-top sightseeing bus. I did two circuits of the route (one on each side) to take in all the key sights, by the end of which I was feeling quite cold so I wandered back to the hotel to warm up and to collect my jacket that I had hung up in the wardrobe thinking I wouldn’t need it.

I wandered back into town and had a long walk around the city centre, partly as it was starting to get late trying to find a restaurant that was open, without much luck. In the end I had given up and was walking back to the hotel when I came upon a street full of restaurants which were all in the process of opening.

After a very filling meal I walked the short distance back to the hotel.