Week 12: Majorca, Spain

Hola from Palma de Majorca, Spain!

We pulled into Palma (sort of) on Monday morning...everyone raring to hit the beach and enjoy the warm weather, now that we're in the "summer phase" of deployment. The coldness of our Baltic and northern port visits has left us all pasty, so we're quite ready to roast on the beach for a few days...at least that is my plan! Anyway, due to berthing constraints in the port, we had to anchor out, and so had to use 90 person liberty boats to get to and from the ship. Since I didn't have duty until our last full day in port, it wasn't so bad, and I was able to get a hotel room pretty much right on the beach and stay there until time to head back for duty!

Monday afternoon, the usual crowd of girls got on the liberty boats and headed to shore. Once there, we took a bus the neighboring town of Magaluf and checked into the hotel we'd found for the evening. We grabbed a light lunch, changed clothes, then went out by the pool until the sun went down. After that, several of the guys came over and we shared some wine before heading out for the evening. Clearly, the place to go was the BCM nightclub, where we went for a couple of hours, until we were absolutely too exhausted to stay any longer. Starving (we skipped dinner due to our late lunch) we stopped by the kebab stand that was in between the hotel and club...and I think the analogy used to describe how I ate mine was a lion attacking an unsuspecting antelope! Anyway, once back at the hotel, I enjoyed the moonlight and night breezes on the balcony before falling into bed!!

Tuesday, we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel, then tried to go out to the pool, but it was overcast, so we decided to forego sunbathing for exploring. We did a bit of shopping, had some delicious gazpacho and payella for lunch, and then took the liberty bus back to the ship to drop our bags off. After changing clothes and cleaning up a bit, we went BACK to shore to have sangria and tapas for dinner. We also did our pearl shopping since Majorca is known for its pearls...and I think we cleaned out the store! Also found the downtown area based on my memory of Palma from when we visited here when I was in eighth grade and did a little more exploring there and I found some cute sundresses that I hope to find occasion to wear while we're in the Med the next few weeks! We never did get to the tapas bar, because the ones we went into were all too crowded....but we did find a bar where we ordered several appetizers and a pitcher of sangria, so we sort of fulfilled our mission....

Wednesday (Happy Fourth of July!) I had duty, and spent the day on the bridge as the Officer of the Deck, since we're anchored out and have to be ready to get underway if anything happens...it was uneventful until the reception in the evening (John Lennon's first wife and a former member of ABBA were included in the guest list!) when we had to slightly move the ship to make it easier for the transfer from the liberty boat to the ship. We even had a passing sailboat hail us over bridge to bridge (a radio system) to wish "The Americans" a happy 4th of July, which was pretty neat. We also received another Independence Day salute when one yacht passed and the woman driving took off all her clothes when she got close to our ship! At the end of the day, I was on the bridge for 18 hours straight, making for a very long day! By the time I got off watch, however, the Captain had decided that he wanted to stay in Majorca a little bit longer, so instead of getting underway on Thursday morning as originally planned, we stayed in port one extra day....good deal for me because I roasted myself on the beach all day on Thursday! In fact, I roasted a little too long and now have the pink belly to prove it! That said, after the beach, we went to the Royal Palace of La Almudaina, where all the kings of Majorca lived beginning in 1229. Following our tour of the castle, we finally got the tapas that we missed out on earlier in our visit. So yummy...I can't wait to try more when we get to Rota, Spain in a couple of weeks!

After our extra day in Palma, we got underway on Friday for the beginning of Operation Active Endeavor. We are tasked with identifying shipping/traffic lanes in the Mediterranean, among other things. So we'll have a few weeks at sea doing that before we collect our SNMG-1 staff (that I told you about a few updates ago) and begin the final phase of our deployment: circumnavigating Africa!

Adios!

Kate