The great Alcúdia-vs-Polleça beach-off (Pollença wins again)

Last day. There’s a particular flavour of wind that only shows up on departure mornings, as if Mallorca itself is trying to hurry us toward the airport. It was blowing again today, and the temperature had dropped just enough to make us reconsider our choices regarding swimwear.

But first, breakfast. Obviously. Some things are non-negotiable even on the final furlong of a holiday.

Back in the room, we took our time — no alarm, no itinerary, just us watching the clouds slowly lose the argument to the sun. By mid-morning it had cleared up nicely, which left us with The Big Decision: where do we spend our last beach day?

Option A: Port d’Alcúdia, conveniently just around the corner. Option B: Port de Pollença, a short drive away but a known quantity.

We gave Alcúdia a fair shake. In principle, it had everything — sand, sea, proximity. In practice, it also had Muro beach’s overflow crowd, and it turns out “not really our scene” is doing a lot of polite work in that sentence.

So, decision made, we pointed the car back toward Pollença, where the weather had also apparently decided to cooperate, delivering full, generous sunshine like it had something to prove.

Loungers set us back €28 — a small but noticeable price bump from the day before — though after ten days of gentle Mallorcan negotiation-by-shrug, we’ve made peace with beach economics. Two hours of doing absolutely nothing followed, which is precisely as productive as it sounds and exactly what was required.

Then, hunger. And when hunger strikes on your last day, you do not experiment. You go back to the restaurant that already proved itself: same table, same wonderfully charming waitress, same excellent food — in quantities that once again outpaced our ambition. The dessert, in hindsight, was less “final flourish” and more “tactical error.” Worth it anyway.

A post-lunch nap on the beach followed, filed under Essential Recovery Procedures, before we drove back to the hotel around 4pm.

From there, our holiday split into its natural final act: I stayed in to begin the noble, thankless work of packing, while my other half made a beeline for the pool — quite possibly both pools, on principle, because why stop now. We reconvened, as tradition demands, at aperitif time.

The evening had no plans, which felt entirely appropriate: a couple of drinks at the bar, maybe a shared pizza, and an early night, since tomorrow means the early haul across the island to Palma airport.

It’s been a genuinely good last day of a genuinely good holiday — and I’m already fairly certain this won’t be our last trip to Mallorca. We know where to go now. That’s practically a return ticket.