The Spaniards can't make a good burger, apparently

Almost caught up!  Last weekend, my friends and I went to Mallorca.  Veronica and I left a day early, as we don't have class in the afternoon on Thurs, and the others met us on Fri.  It's only about an hour long flight, so we arrived at around 8.  Our hotel was fantastic- near the airport and the bus into Palma, nice rooms, a pool, breakfast included, only 16 € per person per night for a double.  Not bad, eh?  Anyway, we walked along the beach a bit and found a sushi restaurant the first night- hurray!  I was pretty happy.  We then headed to another place for drinks.  Cultural note: the Spanish kind of bounce around from restaurant/bar to restaurant/bar, eating or drinking a little at each place and conversing.  Dinner takes several hours this way.  It's pretty fantastic.  Anyway, our socially awkward waiter hit on me pretty much the entire time.  Yah.  I was pretty sure he was in high school until he said he was twenty.  Side note: there are a TON of German tourists on Mallorca.  It's like the Bahamas of Europe and all the Germans apparently want to escape the cold or something.  Pretty much everyone assumed we were German all weekend and kept asking "Sprechen sie deutsch?"  Um, no.  Fri, we headed into Palma, a surprisingly nice city reminiscent of the Plateau de Montreal neighborhood. Plaza de la Reina:

We decided to hit the cathedral on a whim, and wow.  It has got to be my favorite cathedral I've seen in Spain.  When I walked in, I was first struck by the light.  Words can't describe it, and the camera couldn't capture it.  It flowed in through stained glass, painting rainbows on the floor and pillars, illuminating the hollow core of the cathedral.  The sheer space inside couldn't be photographed, and the colors of the glass were so vibrant as to be painful.   The nave and altar decorations were very interesting too- the whole hanging contraption above reminded be of a whale jawbone with lanterns attached.  I stood staring in astonishment, taking it all in, for what must have been half an hour.  Photos:

The pictures don't really do it justice, I'm afraid.  It was stunning; I just wanted to capture the colors and carry them away with me.  Veronica had to pull me away; if you've ever seen the "double rainbow" youtube video, that was me.  The colors!  The light!  The space!  Aaaaah!  Ok, I'm done now.  It was renovated by Gaudi, so I can't wait to see Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (if I ever have time to go).  After the cathedral, we asked the tourist office about beaches.  There was one near our hotel, but it was crowded and not very scenic.  Following their advice, we took the bus to the end of the line: Illetes beach.  It was small and very pretty, with clear turquoise water and an emerald-green tide pool on the rocks to the side (I had to do some exploring :).  I definitely heard some Spanish (as well as the usual German), and I overheard a British guy saying that it was his favorite beach.  Go tourist office.

We got back at around 5 (and went from being cool Spaniards eating a late lunch to lame American tourists eating the early bird special for dinner) and decided we really wanted a hamburger.  You would think, what with the Germans and all, that they would have good ones.  Sadly not the case.  We did, however, get free shots and club recommendations from Carlos the Creepy Waiter from the night before.  So not a total loss.  We then met up with everyone else and decided to go out for Katie's birthday to a bar near our hotel with green and red Christmas-style lights and really good piña coladas.

The owner had a black chow chow!  It was so cute!  Sadly I didn't get a picture, but I was dying over it.  We dubbed it Sirius Black (my Fund friends decided to assign everyone there a Harry Potter character a few weeks ago.  I'm Dean Thomas.  Why?  Because they wanted me in Gryffindor without being generic and I have the darkest skin of the group.  Nice).  Anyways, we tried to follow Carlos's advice and head to a discoteca in Palma but apparently he had no idea what he was talking about.  Granted, half the youth of Palma were congregating, drunk, in the Plaza he mentioned, but they were just kind of sitting there and the club he recommended was closed.  We returned in defeat, sans celebration.  The next day, we decided to return to Illetes beach and pretty much just spent all our time there.  It was very relaxing; I enjoyed it.  On the way back, we stopped by the cathedral so the others could see it, but there was a wedding going on.  It must have been someone very rich/important as everything was incredibly fancy and elegant.  We watched the bride arrive and walk into the church (her veil was twisted-argh), then watched a gaggle of tourists enter right after her, as her music was still playing.  How tacky!  One guy was wearing plaid shorts.  It's a wedding, for God's sake, have some respect!   Once we got back, we decided to try for hamburgers again at another place.  Unfortunately, they were also subpar.  Due to our various disappointments with the nightlife, we decided to stay in for the night and play cards.  Sun., we had to leave the beach behind and fly home.  We shared a taxi with a very nice couple, Esperanza and Marcel, on the way to the airport.  They're from Valladolid and are going to look for lodging for us when we go there in November.  How nice!  The rest of the trip back was rather uneventful, except for the creepy old guy who kept groping Veronica's leg on the flight.  Ew.  One thing I forgot to mention in my last post: they recently renovated the facade of the cathedral in Salamanca and added new carvings to it.  One of the carvers decided to modernize it and add an astronaut: