DRAFT

Port de Sóller, Wagyu beef and the great towel land grab

Another holiday, another early night that has somehow reprogrammed my body clock into that of a farmer. But there are worse fates than being awake at 7am when your room comes with a kettle and a balcony overlooking the pool. Tea in hand, I settled in for the real morning entertainment: the sun lounger reservation ritual, a sport with no official rulebook but strict unwritten laws. Guests emerge bleary-eyed, towel bundled under one arm like a rugby ball, execute a swift strategic placement on their chosen lounger, and vanish back inside as if nothing happened. No eye contact. No words exchanged. Just pure, silent triumph. Twenty-four hours a day this deployment schedule apparently isn’t enough, because by 7am the good spots are already spoken for.

Breakfast, a bit of blog admin, a scroll through the news, and we were out the door by 9:30, bound for Port de Sóller. It’s further out than our usual haunts, but the drive is a treat in itself — motorway out of Alcúdia direction Palma’s suburbs, then a sharp right turn into the Serra de Tramuntana, winding you north through mountains that make you forget you’re technically still commuting to a beach.

Sóller immediately impressed. Parking within 200 metres of the beach felt like winning the lottery, and sun loungers for the day at 19€ felt like winning it twice. We claimed our spots and did the serious work of lounging, with me providing my own soundtrack of relaxing music, presumably to drown out the sound of other people’s towel-based diplomacy.

When hunger struck, salvation was ten metres away in the form of a beachside bar. A large beer and what I can only describe as one of the great beef burgers of my life — Wagyu, a few extra euros, entirely worth every cent — followed by ice cream with wild berries and local orange. Genuinely delicious enough that I’ve started entertaining thoughts of a full holiday based in Sóller itself. This has now been formally logged in the notebook, which is rapidly becoming less a travel journal and more a list of places I’ve decided to fall in love with.

More lounging followed, because digestion is important and so is not moving, before we packed up and drove back around 3pm. Back at the hotel, the routine has now calcified into full ceremony: nap, aperitif by the water, gin & tonic at the bar, pizza, an unreasonably large nightcap, and bed. Content doesn’t begin to cover it.