Mediterranean 2014 - part nine

Forty years and one month ago, I was badly drunk - very badly drunk - in Palma de Mallorca. I return chastened. I am now, of course, a mature, respectable, responsible individual. 

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Really attentive readers will remember my encounters earlier this year with South American jugglers. Is this a Latin thing? The Palma scooter rider does not look impressed. Suspect he hits a red at the same intersection every weekday morning. 

The sheer joy of Europe in the quiet off-season: a waiter wondering where the customers are, a ship's digest copy of the New York Times (they also print a Canadian and Britain Today) and a rapidly served café con leche.

It's very cold in Palma with a forecast high of 21 Celcius (70 Fahrenheit), so the cafe provides blankets and heaters for sidewalk patrons. People look at my light shirt and then at me as if I'm bonkers.

On the island of Robert Graves and George Sand (her lover was Frédéric Chopin), this muffled gent looks thoroughly literary. Doubtless doing the lottery.

My 1881 Handbook is illuminating: 'Few cities are more aristocratic than Palma. The nobility of the island are popularly called Butifarras, "big sausages"'. No sausages, but the cathedral is pretty big. I only saw it through an alcoholic haze in 1974. In fact, now that I think of it, I may have been carried oblivious past the cathedral. 

Reformed, well, at least until tonight's pre-dinner drink, I go inside. The cathedral claims to have a relicario de la veracruz, a part of the 'true cross'. It's contained in the cross you see below. Hmmmmm ...

The rose window is magnificent ...

... and, between 1904 and. 1914, Gaudi made significant - controversial at the time - alterations. Unfortunately, it's so dark, I only manage his candles. You can see the characteristic Gaudi decorative flourishes.

Near the cathedral, Africans, who've managed to survive the Mediterranean crossing, sell knock-off handbags. Europe doesn't want them and doesn't know what to do with them. One of the many tragedies of our time.