Palma de Mallorca

Introduction

Arab Baths in Palma

© MarshallC

Palma de Mallorca is the capital of the autonomous region of the Balearic Islands and is located on the island of Mallorca. It has about 425,000 inhabitants, though the urban area is a little larger and has well over half a million people living there.

Sights and Activities

• La Seu Cathedral, built on the place where there used to be a mosque.
• The old city, with its narrows streets, almost resembling an Arab medina.
• Arab Baths, remnants of the Moorish past.
• Belver Castle - a round castle near Palma de Malorca with great views.

Weather

Palma de Mallorca has a Mediterranean climate with warm, dry and sunny summers and mild but wetter winters. Temperatures during summer (June - September) are between 27 °C and 31 °C while nights are balmy at 18 °C. Winters last from December to February, when it's still a welcome 15 °C during the day but nights average a chilly 4 °C. This is also the time when most of the rain falls and occasionally even here in Palma snow is possible (usually only in the mountainous inland of the island though).

Getting There

By Plane

Palma de Mallorca Airport (IATA: PMI, ICAO: LEPA), located 15 minutes' drive from the city, is the main airport in Mallorca. After Madrid Barajas Airport and Barcelona Airport this is the third busiest airport in the country and one of the busiest in Europe during the summer season. Numerous airlines serve the island, including several budget airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair.

There are dozens of destinations, mainly in the north and west of Europe, as well as places closer by in the south.
Ryanair has flights to Alicante, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bremen, Dublin, Edinburgh, Frankfurt-Hahn, Girona, Glasgow-Prestwick, Leeds/Bradford, Liverpool, London-Stansted, Lübeck, Madrid, Reus (near Barcelona, Shannon, Stockholm-Skavsta and Weeze (near Düsseldorf).
Air Berlin is another big one serving the island with destinations like Almería, Amsterdam, Asturias, Barcelona, Basel/Mulhouse, Berlin, Bilbao, Bremen, Ciudad Real, Cologne/Bonn, Copenhagen, Dortmund, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Erfurt, Faro, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Ibiza, Jerez de la Frontera, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Lisbon, Madrid, Malaga, Menorca, Munich, Murcia, Nuremberg, Porto, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Stuttgart, Valencia andZürich.
Thomson Airways, Thomas Cook Airlines, TUIfly, Easyjet and Condor other big airlines, mainly serving the UK, Germany and Spain but some other destinations as well.

By Train

There are several train routes. One travels several times daily between Palma de Mallorca and Soller on the northwest coast. Check Sollernet for more information about the train and the town.
Other trains go inland to Inca. A third train connects Inca with Sa Pobla and Manacor.

By Car

Most cities and towns in Mallorca have road links directly to Palma.

By Bus

Regional buses to destinations around the island are operated mainly by TIB (Transport de les Iles Balears).

By Boat

Palma de Mallorca

© Aplmac

Domestic
Several ferry operators have connections to Palma de Mallorca from mainland Spain. Acciona Trasmediterránea has boats to and from Alicante for example. Other ferry operators include Balearia between Barcelona, Valencia and Denia and Mallorca. Iscomar offers roughly the same connections as well.
Most of the ferries have connections to the other Balearic Islands as well, like Ibiza and smaller Menorca.

France

• Trasmediterranea between Marseille and Palma de Mallorca.

Getting Around

By Car

Renting a car is one of the best ways to cover a lot of the island and offers the possibility to visit some more remote places. Roads are generally in a good conditions and prices of rental cars are not too high. Book ahead during the peak months of July and August.

By Public Transport

EMT [1] (ph. 971 43 10 24) runs the local bus service in Palma.

The metro line consists of nine stations. Trains run daily from 6:15am to 11pm, with a 15 minute service during the day, reduced to 30 minutes during the late and early hours and on Sundays. The metro trains starts from Palma Estació Intermodal.

Eat

• Pamboli - traditional "sandwich", made with Majorcan bread, plenty of oil and tomato, and then with the topping of your choice.
• Ensaimada - literally translated as "made from pork fat" - traditional pastry here, sometimes it just has powdered sugar on top, other times it is filled with chocoloate, cream, fruit filling.
• Sobrasada - Raw,cured sausage that is typical of Mallorca.
• Bunyols - (sweet pastries)- they are typical only in autumn. Bunyols are commonly made of boiled potatoes, flour, eggs, butter or lard, yeast and sugar; they are fried in hot oil and then sprinkled with sugar. (A fried Donut)

Sleep

Upscale

Keep Connected

Internet

Internet is widely available within Spain. Most airports have wifi-zones and in most towns there are internet cafés or shops where you can use internet for a fixed price. Wi-Fi points in bars and cafeterias are available after ordering, and most hotels offer Wi-Fi connection in common areas for their guests.

Phone

See also: International Telephone Calls

The international access code for Spain is +34. The emergency number for police, ambulance and the fire brigade is 112.

In cities you can find plenty of public phones, and 'locutorios'. The latter are small shops where you can use the phone and use internet. Most of them also sell prepaid cards for mobile telephones. These shops are used a lot by foreigners to call to their mother country.

The main mobile network operators in Spain are Yoigo, Vodafone, Movistar and Orange, as in most of Europe voice and data coverage is generally good in urban areas however it can be patchy in rural locations. Cheap mobile phones (less than €50) with some pre-paid minutes are sold at FNAC or any phone operator's shop (Vodafone, Movistar, Orange). Topping-up is then done by buying scratch cards from the small stores, supermarkets, vending points (often found in tobacco shops) or kiosks.

Post

If you want to post a card, you can head to the post office (Correos). The Spanish post is not yet as efficient as colleagues in other countries so receiving a card can take a bit longer than the number of days that it should take. On the website of Correos, you can find the locations of nearby post offices.
Post offices are generally open from 8:30am to 2:00pm, although times will vary according to the size of the city/town and the main post offices might be open until the early evening. Most will also open again on Saturday mornings, but in the smaller towns will close as early as 12 noon. When posting a letter, look for a yellow box and, if possible, post at the post office itself where there will also be divisions for local, national and international mail. Be prepared for long queues at the post office. This is why tobacco shops sell stamps and many will also have the facility to weigh packages. Standard letters/postcards of up to 20 grams sent within Spain are €0.34. However, non-standard letters/postcards of up to 20g are €0.39. Letters/postcards of 20 to 50 grams are €0.45. In the case of international shipping, the price is €0.64 to most countries within Europe for standard envelopes (letters/postcards) up to 20g, for a few European countries and outside Europe it is €0.78. If you want to send a package you are probably better off with a private courier company like TNT, DHL or UPS, as they offer quick and reliable services against competitive prices.

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