Palma de Mallorca is an adorable little resort town. It reminds me of Florida in a way—hotels and resorts, beaches, shopping, great weather, etc… We decided to take it a little easy here, and it was lovely.
First, we took a shuttle into town and we immediately noticed the city wall, which surrounds the outer part of the city. It is very large! Right inside the wall is the Seo Cathedral and the Alumdaina Palace which are both absolutely beautiful. The cathedral is from the 13th century and the ornate interior was partly designed by Gaudi (much about him in my Barcelona post). The doorway to the harbor is absolutely beautiful. The palace is right in front of the cathedral and used to be the residence of Arab kings. It is full of paintings now.
After happening upon these impressive and important landmarks, we wandered further into town. We did some shopping, and had some sangria. After this, we decided to go to the beach. It was really beautiful on a beautiful day so all in all, we would say we loved Palma De Mallorca!
The next day, we travelled to where we were most excited to visit—Tunisia which is in the Northern part of Africa. We did not really know this at the time, but it is a very Middle Eastern part of Africa. All the people are Middle Eastern so they told us to dress very conservatively. However, we did not even see one woman in a Berka. I still wore a long black sundress and kept my shoulders covered which was brutal in the 100 degree heat.
We did a ship sponsored excursion this day because we didn’t feel comfortable “winging it” in Africa. First, we visited a museum FULL of mosaics. They were extremely impressive. The mosaics are from all over Tunisia, and they are all from the floors of wealthy homes. Even though we saw many of the mosaics on walls, that is just because they do not have room to have them all of the floors. Some of them were simple patterns and some were very ornate. We learned that the nicest mosaics were only in the dining room, as that is where they were shown off during parties. They would incorporate different symbols to let their guests know certain things; for example, a wine bottle meant they had a cellar full of wine so the guests can drink as much as they want.
After the museum, we went to a rug store. This was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. Apparently people come to Tunisia just to buy rugs. The sales people in Tunisia are very, VERY pushy by our standards. This pushiness, however, is completely normal in their culture. After an impressive presentation of their selection of rugs, the guide gave us free time to look around and possibly buy rugs if we wanted to. I wanted to buy one so badly, as we need one anyway. However, they were definitely out of our budget. In order to find out they were too expensive for us though, we had to ask how much they were. The guy was suddenly ON US. “This one is $10,000,” he said. We replied that we certainly could not afford that. “What can you afford then? What about this one? This one is only $1200.” We replied that we would have to think about it—even though that was still wayyyy out of our budget. “No! No! No thinking! Why would you come here and not leave with a souvenir? In America these are 5 times as much!” We understand this, we explained, but we cannot afford it. “What can you afford?! What is your budget?!” Craig refused to give a budget because he knew that would lock us in so to speak. After about 15 minutes of this, we decided to leave the room. It didn’t end there however. He followed us out of the room, through the hall, down the stairs, and through the store. We started looking at other souvenirs and another guy started questioning us. We quickly left the store. It is very overwhelming. Again, it is just part of their culture but wow!
After the rug store and lunch, we went to the city of Sidi Bau Said. This was like the rug store but slightly less pushy, and times 1000 stores. I wanted to buy some pashminas so we started looking. The guy saw us looking and rushed right over. He wouldn’t give us a price until after we picked out what we wanted. After showing us his veryyy large collection of scarves, we picked out 3 and finally asked—how much? He replied: 90 Euros. Hahahahaha. 90 Euros! That is like $140. For 3 scarves which you can buy anywhere! In fact I just bought one for 5 Euros in Pisa. So we laughed at him—told him we were thinking more like 10 Euros and then we began to bargain. After a while, we got into it. It’s sort of fun. At one point I actually walked out and Craig looked at the guy and said: “She’s the boss and she says we have to go”. Eventually we agreed on 12 Euros. We did this again to get an amazing bowl that I fell in love with—don’t know how we will be getting that home but that is neither here nor there. After experiencing the culture for a day we really got used to it. We got 2 of them for 40 Euros, all the way down from 1 for 200!
As we left, we were discussing how it was fun to haggle with the people—and you really begin to tell stories about yourselves. He has 3 kids at home he needs to support! We are students…on our honeymoon! Ahhh congratulations! We give you 10 Euro discount! And so on. You get to know people this way and I think that is half of the point of it all.
All in all we got to experience a completely different country, continent and culture—and that makes for an amazing day!
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