Saturday 23 June 2012

The Good Ship Aimee!


Avast there...Ca'n Reus has bought a boat! The good ship Aimee - an open topped motor boat with space for about six people at a squeeze.


messing about on boats
She chugs along nicely at dizzying speeds of up to 15 mph, and comes complete with with a canvas awning and a few cushions. A bona fide millionaire's yacht if there ever was one ;)

We're getting a lot of use out of her though, and she opens up the island of Mallorca in different ways to a car. For instance,  we have travelled by water to the hidden beach of Cala Tuent to the north of the hotel. We are also thinking of organising a fishing trip or two - although admittedly no one in the hotel actually knows how to fish. 

She's birthed at Port de Solller roughly 10 minutes away from the hotel. Apparently getting a mooring there is fiercely competitive (not to mention pricey) so we are very fortunate. Mark you, getting her out onto the water is tricky - she is parked at right angles to the large ferries operating in the port. We've had more experienced mariners smirk as we disentangle ourselves from snagged mooring lines on our way in and out!

Still, it's all good fun and we are all looking forward to discovering new parts of the island. Ca'n Reus owns the boat jointly with a few other Fornalutx locals, who split the costs (and time) with us. 

See you land lubbers out here some day ;)  




Monday 4 June 2012

A Celebration of the Orange

Walked in to the plaça in Fornalutx today, to be confronted by a huge boat made of oranges and lemons. It is a beautifully constructed thing, topped by a billowing white sail, a skilled sculpture of hundreds of oranges and lemons held together by rubber bands - albeit a somewhat strange sight in a mountain village in Mallorca. But the week long orange fiesta in the Soller Valley is filled with the unexpected and the bizarre. Every child thinks it is an excuse to beg, borrow or steal a pile of oranges, sit on his or her front door step with the citrus mountain in front of them and sell them to you one by one (10 centimos each) as if they are taking part in some ancient fruit worshipping ritual. Their parents are baking up a storm and erecting trestle tables wherever there is a space to sell you slices of orange cake and all the restaurants in the Soller Valley are offering specialities such as cod with orange aioli and local prawns marinated in orange vinaigrette, rounded off with orange sorbet and more orange cake and washed down with Angel d'Or, the local, extremely potent orange liquer - it could be quite a week!
Must go now, the local restaurant here in Fornalutx is offering scallops cooked in Angel d'Or liquer, salmon with cream of oranges and - wait for it - orange cake!