Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

The Train To Soller - Kate's Here!! Pt. II

We finally took the historical train to Soller while Kate was here.  The train was first opened in 1912 and runs from downtown Palma, through the mountains, and back down to the city of Soller on the East side of the island.


The train travels 27.3 km (17 miles) in about an hour and goes through 13 tunnels on the trip.


The train is made mostly of wood and is supposed to be the exact way that it looked way back in the day and is even supposed to be maintained in the same way as it was 100 years ago, whatever that means.


Once you make it to the other side of the mountains, the train stops and gives you a chance to take a few pictures of the town of Soller down in the valley below.


The most impressive building in Soller is the St. Bartomeu Church which originally dates from 1236.  The most unique feature of the church is that it has a beautiful facade, but the rest of the church is fairly plain (unusual in Mallorca anyway).


The original hand-operated switch to change tracks.  I find this fascinating, Kelly thinks I'm a nerd.


These are the trams (different from the trains) which run from Soller to Port de Soller which is about 4km away.  Most of the old town in Mallorca were built about that far from the water to protect from pirate attacks (on a side note...  Whats a pirates favorite letter?  You think it be arrrrr, but its really the sea!).


While we were walking through Soller, a cat perched on a windowsill took one look at Kelly and let out a loud pet-me meeeoooooow.  After the (slightly longer than) appropriate cat petting time, we were wondering if Kelly was some sort of cat whisperer.  However, we were maybe 20 feet away when another person walked by the cat, it meowed, and they pet him.  Turns out this cat is just running a kind of pet-me racket.  Brilliant.


Kate and I in front of the two most Soller-y things in town, the church and fresh fruit trees.



Fin

Monday, November 11, 2013

Pollenca - Part I

Friday night we went to Pollenca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollença) a town at the north end of the island.  After this guy read the bus schedule wrong, we made it into town around 7pm.  We had booked a cheap hotel in the center of town.  Turns out, hotel rates drop significantly in November and we had this view overlooking Placa Mayor, the main square in the town.
 The next morning we explored around the town and met our roommates, Breck & Aleena, who had taken the bus from Palma that morning.

We went to hike this...

Which looks like this...

And involves lots of these...

At the top of the 900' climb is a small castle/church,

that has beautiful views of the surrounding hills and Mediterranean Sea.

There was a full picnic area on the back (north) side that had even better views of Port de Pollenca, the Med, and the Cap de Formentor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_de_Formentor).