Menorca
September 2013
Having previously hightailed it around the UK for the best part of three years, it was time for Daisy to experience her first holiday abroad and her first flight. Lynne had done her usual excellent groundwork and booking, and we were renting a villa for ten days. The villa was called Casa Andrea in Cala En Porter, which is further long the south coast from the airport.
It had all been a bit hectic before we left. The day before, Lynne had her twelve-week scan, which I attended before heading over to Pontefract for a work awayday at the races, via Manchester, Leeds and Wakefield (lift to the station, three trains, taxi then coach).
On Friday 20th September, we were off to Manchester Airport, with Daisy expressing gratitude to the taxi driver. We had a selection of sweets and books to help the journey go more smoothly, but Daisy was pretty good for the entirety of the two or so hour journey. On take-off, she shot a glance towards Lynne for reassurance and the positive response gave her confidence.
We hung around in Menorca Airport for a little bit, grabbing some lunch and waiting for the villa to be ready. After the short journey to the villa, and some unpacking and general chilling, we headed out for a meal at a restaurant called Samoa (which wasn't that great, just ok). The standard formula was employed, i.e. keep Daisy entertained with colouring materials.
Daisy must have made a reasonable effort with her main course (and with just generally being well-behaved), because here she is tucking in to coconut ice-cream served in a coconut, reminiscent of the curry house in Aberfeldy.
It may seem that all she ate on this holiday was chilled desserts - this may or may not have been a milk lolly - but that wouldn't be completely true. This was our first excursion to the beach, the path to which wasn't that easy to find, and involved us descending a hundred or so steps with a two-year-old and a pushchair. Anyway, this was where we spent most of the first Saturday.
This is Daisy deploying her best sad-face-with-Daddy's-shades-on-upside-down look, whilst lying on a sun lounger. It's a good one (the look not the lounger).
We had timed our visit to the island of Menorca quite well, as the Cala En Porter fiesta, which celebrates the end of the summer (luckily it had no influence over the weather). We headed out early for our evening meal in order to see what was going on. As we looked down the road heading into the village, an armada of horses (it's not the right group name but it gives a better impression) came trotting into view.
As they cantered past us, we were treated to a front wheelie (or whatever the horse equivalent is), which actually looked a bit dangerous, not just for the riders but also the nearby onlookers.
The centre of Cala En Porter was characterised by a six-road junction and, from another road, came some children with a severely overgrown heads.
We've no idea who these characters are, of course, but these exceedingly tall people danced a merry jig with each other.
Daisy looked on, thumb at the ready.
The various characters lined up for a photo opportunity after the parade had finished, so I grabbed the opportunity.
Strangely there are no evening meal shots (which is most unlike me), but on the way home I got a good shot of the sun setting.
The next morning and it's time for some jigging outside in leopard-print pyjamas.
And some general striding by the pool.
Oh and of course some munching on toast in the sunshine. Ah, the joys of warm climate holidays.
The Mealtime Photo Service (TM) has resumed as we stopped off for luncheon at Sa Paissa, a restaurant opposite the one we visited the previous night (they are all, as you would expect for a small village, fairly close together). There's clearly some play-acting going on as Kitty goes for a wander across the table.
On the way back, we stopped off at the supermarket for some Twister action, which melted in the sun at a rapid pace. Daisy looks somewhat quizzical. And she's wearing her sunhat.
That will do for now.
With the girls having a mid-afternoon nap, I went for a wander. It's shame I hadn't packed my skateboard for the nearby park.
I noticed some striking flowers on my wander.
I also discovered the location of Bar 007, which we never actually went to (since it generally opened too late and turned out to be more of a bar than a restaurant - the clue's in the name I guess).
This is the start of the steps we descended earlier in our stay. In the background, you can see the beach...
...and here's a closer view of the idyllic bay. The beach itself was relatively narrow, particularly compared to what we are used to in the UK, but none the worse for it.
I liked the idea of one of these boats, a pedal boat with a slide on top, although not sure it's a great idea to have the slide landing you in the path of the boat itself... I presume you have to be stopped. Daisy was too young to even try one of these, unfortunately. Maybe next time...
And from the other side, you can see that surrounding the beach was undeveloped land. Only on one side was there an attempt to build, and the positioning of some of the villas looked almost precarious.
Here are more of the villas and an indication of how steep some of the roads were. Maybe I should hire a bike...
On the Sunday evening, we went to a restaurant that I had discovered on my walk, La Salamandra. It offered the opportunity to have a mozzarella and tomato starter, which was done very well, and a curry for main, which it advertised as being produced by an Indian chef. Naturally, I went for this option - the curry was reasonably tasty but not quite as amazing as I'd hoped. Here, Daisy lines up all her crayons apparently without anything having to draw on.
Chances of Daisy remotely getting close to finishing this meal of pizza and chips is virtually nil...
...which doesn't necessarily stop her getting a dessert (it's a different part of the stomach, etc), although I would guess that it was because she had been well-behaved rather than anything about appetite.
Monday morning saw another trip to the beach in glorious sunshine, as Daisy played chicken with the tide, not that the waves were particularly strong.
Tide wins. As you can see, the sea was a lovely turquoise blue.
This is actually a deliberate attempt to pose for camera. Well, I think it is.
A rare excursion from behind the camera. Daisy refused to walk too far into the water so I had to "picka me up" to carry her in. Some good T-shirt suntan action going on here, the legacy of a summer of cycling (and generally wearing T-shirts, natch).
As the day continued to warm up (it never got too close to 30 degrees, but it was still a reasonably strong sun) and the time approached luncheon, we headed to a nearby café. Daisy did one of the MEN crosswords I had brought along (whilst wearing my cap), so I was probably doing some crayoning or something.
In the evening, we tried the restaurant opposite the previous evening's venue, which was an American diner-type place. There were three attempts at posing and this is the best. It's actually quite a good one, only very slightly marred by the appearance of the waiter in the background.
One cracking purchase that Lynne got at the airport (I think) was a 'Hello Kitty goes on holiday' themed sticker book. This is Tuesday.
And that concludes this session.
After lunch, the young lady had a play around the pool...
...and indeed in it. She was a master at splashing if not, yet, swimming. ("Daddy, pick-a-me up" was her line, sounding somewhat Italian.)
Tuesday evening saw a trip to Big Al's Steakhouse, which we nearly abandoned because the music was too loud inside and it was threatening to rain (it never did), but we decided to sit outside and take our chances. Operation Keep Daisy Entertained of course began with colouring.
We'd need a fair bit of time to distract her given the size of Lynne's choice for main, a large rack of BBQ ribs with a big bundle of chips. (Eating for two, remember. Well, one and a half. Something like that anyway. Man, what's your problem?) She looks pretty thrilled at having her plate of food photographed, anyway.
We didn't do any evening swimming (it wasn't *that* warm), but it was nice to know that it was lit if we did. This is the only shot from the Wednesday. (We were very much taking it easy and not doing an awful lot, so there's only so much you can do with pool-beach-restaurant, although I'm giving it a good shot.)
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