Fabulous Friday Finds – Via de la Plata and Mallorca, Spain

Fabulous Friday Travel Quote

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

Fabulous Friday Contest

*** None of my readers won the Austin Lehman contest. It was a reader from the familyrambling.com that won. Bummer.***

Perceptive Travel along with eight other independent travel sites is giving readers a chance to guess the route of a round the world journey by following clues. Prizes include round the world airfare for two, a one week first class Eurail pass, a one week rental car in Europe and more. It’s not hard to enter. Good luck.

Fabulous Friday Travel Tip

This week’s travel tip is a result of a flight I took last week. When you book your airplane seat, choose Row 13 – aisle or window. Chances are, unless the flight is packed, no one will be in the middle seat. Superstition play a big role here. The fellow sitting across the aisle from me confirmed my findings and he flies weekly.

Fabulous Friday Travel Blog Shout Out

Vagabond Quest runs a monthly series – choosing a different destination every month – and then getting input from fellow travelers and travel bloggers. Mexico was the focus last month. Eighteen terrific suggestions with some stunning photography to boot, will be sure to provide inspiration for anyone thinking of visiting Mexico.

Fabulous Friday Hike

My daughter is in Spain hiking the Via de la Plata – a 1000 kilometer trek from Seville in the south to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest. She’s expecting it to take 6 weeks but she hadn’t bargained for the heat – Africa hot as she puts it, and she should know since she’s been through Sudan and Ethiopia. She has this to say after only two days on the trail.

..lots of hills but mostly on an interesting path with sunflowers, some cool looking trees, lots of wild flowers and some cows. I like the town tonight too. All the buildings are white and it´s quite pretty.

Finding food during the Spanish siesta – which seems to last from 2pm until about 7pm seems to be a problem too. Stay tuned for blog posts and more information on this hike.

Fabulous Friday Travel Destination – Mallorca, Spain

Mallorca, an island in the Mediterranean, is a very popular holiday destination. It’s the largest Spanish island, boasting a full time population of roughly 870,000 people. Catalan is the major language though Spanish runs a close second. It’s very popular with European tourists – especially as a beach and party destination. But it came to my attention last year from an article written by Kathy and Craig from hikingcamping.com. They call it “one of the world’s supreme winter hiking destinations.” In fact their write-up outlines eight hikes – for fine and bad weather days.

Much of Mallorca is agricultural land – with almonds and olives grown in great abundance plus a variety of citrus fruits like tangerines, oranges and lemons. You won’t find any shortage of places to eat in Mallorca – with many of the restaurants featuring locally grown or prepared food, like sobrassada, similar to Spanish chorizo, a cured sausage native to Mallorca. Almost every meal will begin with olives – and fresh bread. And with over five million almond trees, you can also expect to see a lot of almonds in both sweet and savoury dishes. You might want to visit in late January and February to catch the almond trees in blossoms and in August for the harvest. For more information on food and drink in Mallorca, click here.

Leigh McAdam

HikeBikeTravel

Photo Credits: Via de la Plata, Cabo San Lucas, Mallorca

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