Thursday July 28, 2022

Today I started early, playing tennis at 8am when it was nice and cool. After hitting, I had planned on a hike to the Alaro castle, but decided it was too long and hot today.

It was suggested to me that I check out the wikiloc app, which I downloaded and it’s great. It’s easy to use and basically if you put in a location it will give you a suggested walk or hike in the area (you can put in your parameters, eg length of walk, degree of difficulty, etc).

I was going to go to Cuber, a lake in the Soller vicinity, but got sidetracked going to the Lafiorie glass factory which was suggested as an improvement over the Gordiola glass factory which I visited yesterday and it was. It is near Valdemossa. I walked into the glass blowing area and watched for quite a while. The glass maker started with a glob of glass, blew into it and shaped it, heated, shaped, and working with another glass maker, added a glob of molten glass which was then shaped into a handle. In the end it was an olive oil server.

After watching the glass makers, I walked into the shop, which had very pretty and reasonably priced glass. I’m traveling too much to buy an glass but in the fall I hope to return there and pick out something…the glasses and the olive oil and vinegar pourers were really nice. The store was much lighter, cleaner and less dusty than the Gordiola one.

I used the wikiloc app to find a nearby walk, and one appeared that was not too difficult or long and had nice views, and was only about 15 minutes away instead of an hour. So I drove through Valdemossa (which was crowded with tourists), towards Deia, and, following instructions, turned into the parking lot of the Continental Hotel, which was overlooking the sea. Before starting the hike I walked to the hotel’s view which was pretty spectacular. The trail started just across the street from the hotel and was a loop. I walked to the first “mirador” (view location) which also had a spectacular view. I walked for another 45 minutes or so, the last part of which was pretty steep and slippery…I should have cut that part short. The walk was almost entirely in the shade even at midday, great on a hot summer day. It was very quiet, the only people I saw were three mountain bikers. It was a peaceful and pretty walk.

I made it back to Binissalem despite having turned off my phone’s internet access (I shut it down and then couldn’t remember the Vodafone pin…it was stored on another device but I didn’t find it till later), so managed to get back to the airbnb anyway by following the signs in Binissalem to the “estancio tren”. I only made one mistake which resulted in having the back up a city block…

Tomorrow is my last full day here. It’s been a nice interlude between tournaments. Lots of training tomorrow and then off to Finland!