On 08/16/2024 (Friday) we took 2 flights to visit the island of Mallorca, in Spain, with the kids, my brother and my brother-in-law. We spent a week exploring this wonderful place in the Mediterranean and were impressed by the excellent roads, beautiful beaches and mountains and the friendly and hospitable people. I highly recommend it and I intend to go back with the whole group again to see what we didn't have time to see this time.

Let's get to the summary!

From Cascais to Mallorca

In May, we bought our tickets from Lisbon to Mallorca with Vueling and paid 860 euros for a round trip for the four of us. We took flights with short layovers in Barcelona and made the kids believe that it would be cool to take off and land twice each day. It was really exciting on the first day, but on the day we returned, no one cared about the planes anymore and Paddy even said that he would have preferred just one plane... lol. It was tiring, especially because our two outbound flights were quite delayed, so if I ever go back to Mallorca, I will try to buy direct flights.

We ended up saving about 500 euros with these non-direct flights and we also didn't have to pay for luggage. We took our first trip with the kids with just backpacks and I was very proud of ourselves for doing so! 🙂 It's liberating to travel light and spend so little time packing on the way there and back.

Car rental

We also rented the car in May through the comparative website RentCars and we ended up booking with OK Mobility from Friday to the following Saturday for less than 400 euros. I didn't like having to wait almost an hour to pick up the car when we arrived in Mallorca, because the line was huge, but at least they gave us an upgrade and we got a very comfortable hybrid SUV for the price of a Mini car.

Accommodations

Since we stayed on the island for 8 nights, we divided our stay between 2 hotels, one on each side of the island, so that it would be less tiring to travel around with the kids. We didn't want to stay in Palma because we wanted to enjoy nature more, but we managed to visit the capital's famous Cathedral on the last day of our trip.

Our hotels were these in red:

Protur Turo Pins 4* SUP

This first hotel was a great choice! We booked two spacious rooms for 4 nights, had a very complete breakfast, enjoyed the two pools, the playground and even the live music on one of the nights we didn't go out for dinner. I liked the service, the hotel area and was impressed by the guests, who were basically German and French families, all very polite. The only negative point is that they don't have a parking lot and parking on the street was a bit stressful because we wanted a spot close to the hotel entrance, since we were tired after long days with the little ones.

We paid 1700 euros for 2 rooms for 4 nights, giving an average daily rate of 213 euros. Want to know more? See more details here.

Can Xim Inland Tourism

Our second hotel was the complete opposite of the first. I wanted to have a different experience, a more rural tourism experience in the Serra de Tramuntana, which is why I chose a smaller place that seemed more welcoming, but I didn't think it was that great. To start with, we discovered 2 days before our check-in that the hotel had no staff. The entire check-in and communication process is online or by phone and it was a real stress to pass on all the guests' information while we visited beautiful beaches and tried not to run out of battery using the GPS.

We arrived at the hotel on Tuesday and had to enter a code to access the parking lot and then other codes in a locker to get our keys. Since the hotel restaurant was closed, the entire hotel was locked and it was quite annoying to get our bags out of the car and up to our room, which was on the second floor. Furthermore, on our second and third nights, the air conditioning didn't work and we had to sleep with fans in a room that was over 30 degrees. Not at all pleasant. We couldn't talk to anyone to get tips on restaurants or places to visit nearby and when it was time to checkout, We didn't even know what to do with the keys. The good thing is that the hotel has a swimming pool where we could cool off a bit – but it's not designed for small children, as it's 100% deep – and breakfast is in the restaurant, which has tables outside and a nice view of the square.

I think we arrived expecting a cozy little hotel and were disappointed with the above points, but if you go there prepared for this impersonal environment, I think you might like it a lot. We paid 1230 euros for 2 rooms for 4 nights, giving an average daily rate of 154 euros. Want to know more? See more details here

Our summary itinerary

I told all the details of this trip in the detailed post below:

Attractions visited

Beaches/Calas in Mallorca:

1. Muro Beach
2. Cala Llombards
3. Cala D´or
4. Cala Mesquida
5. Sa Calobra
6. It's Trenc

Non-beach attractions in Mallorca:

1. Drach Caves/ Cuevas del Drach – see more information here
2. Palma de Mallorca Cathedral – see more information here

Restaurants

1. Can Gavella (Muro Beach) – place with spectacular views of the beach, delicious food and excellent service. We booked weeks in advance and I highly recommend it! See more details here
2. Encanto Pizzeria (Cala Ratjada) – environment with maximalist decor, beautiful female attendants and pizzas by the meter. See more details here
3. The Gaucho (Cala Ratjada) – restaurant on the main street, very close to the pizzeria above, with a pleasant atmosphere and many meat dishes. See more details here.
4. La Sivina (Cala D´or) – very touristy restaurant, OK food. See more details here.
5. Fussio Lounge (Porto Cristo) – restaurant with a relaxed atmosphere, delicious food and views of the city’s river. See more details here.
6. Gallardo Pizzeria (Alaró) – a small place with lots of tables in one of the city squares and very tasty pizzas. The service started off bad, but then it got better and we really enjoyed it in the end. See more details here.
7. Traffic (Restaurant at our hotel in Alaró) – This place was a wonderful surprise on our trip. We had lunch one day at a table overlooking the pool at our hotel and loved the food. We decided to go back for dinner another day and we didn’t regret it. I highly recommend it! See more details here.
8. SaCova (Soller) – All the restaurants were full and this was the only one with free tables. It doesn’t look great, but the food was OK. The service was good and the view of the town’s church square is lovely. See more details here.
9. Breeze (Sa Calobra) – We stopped at this simple style restaurant self service to eat fish and chips after a day at the beach and we found the food OK, but the view spectacular! See more details here.
10. Noray (Es Trenc) – After a wonderful day at the beach in Es Trenc, we stopped for lunch and dinner at Noray, a trendy beach restaurant. The food was delicious and the service was good, but we had to book in advance because we had read that it was very popular. See more details here.
11. Sa Tafona (Alaró) – The last restaurant we visited in Mallorca was this one very close to our second hotel and we ended the trip with delicious burgers. We sat in a very nice space billboard hidden and we felt like locals when we realized that the other customers were well-known in the city. See more details here
    

Our trip in photos

Other tours in Spain

If you enjoyed our trip to Mallorca and want to learn more about Spain, check out some of the links below to tours we did:

My 5-day solo trip to Barcelona

Setenil de las Bodegas: a must-see in Andalusia

Our road trip to Sierra Nevada

4-day roadtrip in Spain (Badajoz, Merida and Cáceres)

8 days by car in Andalusia

Book tours in Mallorca