This was my second bridge holiday - after the one to Turkey. It wasn't nearly as interesting, and didn't involve getting to know any of the natives. But as I haven't anything more interesting to post at the moment, it will have to do, I guess.

As you will see I am still quite naive about foreign travel at this time.

TRIP TO MINORCA - MAY 14-21, 1990

Having had such a good time on our 1989 Bridge Holiday to Turkey, there was no hesitation whatsoever in my mind, or in Pat's when it came to signing on for another trip. We were somewhat disappointed that we weren't going to Turkey again as we had had such a good time there. But Minorca was new territory to me, and Pat had enjoyed her previous holiday there, so we eagerly awaited the commencement.

Customs and emigration had been stepped up, due to the problems with drugs and bombs and such. Pat was frisked when she went through the queue, and as I waited for my luggage to come through the x-ray chute - the man said, "Will you open this one up for me?" I knew what the problem was right away. I'd bought a travel iron- determined not to have the problem I'd had in Paris of not being able to wear my new dress which Philip said looked like a Brownie Uniform, because it was too wrinkled. So I unzipped my case - he found the iron and discovered it was just what it looked like. Then he asked if I'd open up the back of the camera. It was Andrea's camera- a very tricky one to open, and I had hoped to find somebody else to tell me how to do it. So I fiddled for a bit without success - the guy said, "Just give it here, I'll put it through the machine again on its own." He did, and it was okay. But what wasn't okay was that in repacking all the junk into my little bag (yellow one which I had borrowed) the zip broke. So I had this over laden bag which from then on had to be held shut by hand as well. Never mind. It's all part of the fun of foreign travel.

The flight wasn't called until 7:15 - I finally found Teresa (nervous woman who I had talked into going on the trip) after what seemed like ages of searching. She had been standing in the wrong queue for a long time. And I found the other members of my bridge class that I had been looking out for. I felt responsible for my bunch since I had encouraged them to come. There were 54 of us altogether, and about 10 were people from my class, either now or at some time in the past.
 
Then I saw Ann. "Oh, no", I thought, "not Ann." Ann is a lovely lady - about 75 - large, white-haired, sweet and pleasant, but she is not a bridge player. She had sat through most of the 20 weeks of classes - but she still had great trouble with counting her points (4 for Ace, 3 for King, etc.) - and I don't think she ever achieved a rubber (win) in the whole year. I certainly would have warned her against going, if I had known she was going. But apparently somebody cancelled out at the last minute, and she was asked by Pauline if she wanted to come - Pauline not realizing what she was getting herself in for.

The flight was on time- and a lovely surprise for us. Breakfast included a Buck's fizz- Champagne and Orange Juice mixed. It also contained sausages, eggs, bacon, croissants rolls, butter, marmalade and coffee or tea. I practiced my assertive skills that I'd learned over the last year, and told my stewardess that my coffee was cold, could I have a hot cup please. And it worked.

Being a fairly short flight, things move pretty quickly. You never really felt the need to sit back and read, or wonder when you were going to get there. Flying time was just under three hours, but time seemed to fly. I suppose it was. We flew over London, Paris, and central Spain, but we couldn't see any sights as we went by, as it was too cloudy. But when we came towards Minorca, the sky was blue and clear, and it was a beautiful tropical island we were nearing - palm trees, sheer cliffs, some beautiful beaches, a few hills in the middle. We couldn't wait.

We were shuttled by bus from the plane to the airport even though it was only about a block away on the runway. The airport was spotless. It was new and shiny: spic and span.

So pretty - so much nicer than Paris airport. Customs was no problem at all. Having a non-European passport meant I had to fill in an extra form - but this was easy and everyone was very pleasant. Our luggage was off the plane almost before we had cleared customs. The hotel guide met us and showed us to a modern bus, and we set off for our hotel. Our hotel representative said a few welcoming things and then we were left to take in the scenery. The airport was close to the capital - Mahon (pronounced Mahn - like John).

The city itself is a major port having the second largest natural harbour in the world - second only to Pearl Harbour. And many big ships were in evidence.

The houses were mostly one-story stucco buildings painted white with red roofs.

There didn't seem to be much of a town centre- only a few shops. It only took 10 minutes to drive through the town, and then we were headed due south towards the coast. Our resort, S'Algar, had been created about 10 years ago - so all the buildings which also were white with pink roofs looked alike and almost characterless in their similarity.

Everyone had a beautiful garden with trees and flowers everywhere. Even the waste land was a garden of hundreds of types of wild flowers all in full bloom, turning something of potential ugliness into great beauty. The soil was reddish and rich looking. We found out later that when the resort was built, the foundations of the houses had to be blasted out of rock, and all the soil had to be brought in from mainland Spain. So it gave a new meaning to building houses. The only residence that had been there when the hotel took over was the house which became the main building of the hotel complex. It had been a wealthy landowner’s estate house. There may have been one of two small fishing huts, but it wasn't a village of any description until the hotel business took over.

Now it probably had 500 houses - many of them holiday homes which obviously were only used for a few months each year. The season in Minorca is from May to October - the rest of the time there would be only a handful of people at S'Algar. As we neared our hotel, Pauline took over the microphone. Pauline had been to Minorca many times, and this time she had arranged the holiday without any tour company go-betweens. Because we were early in the season, we expected things not to be too crowded. Only 10 people were scheduled to have single rooms - but the rest of us didn't really mind sharing.

Then Pauline announced, "I have a little surprise for all you ladies who are sharing. Because of a little mix up at the hotel, because they seemed to have overbooked, you will instead be staying at apartments. Each of you will have your own double bedded room and you'll share a living-room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom, and also have a balcony and your own swimming pool for the group of apartments."
 
We couldn't believe our good luck. Those who were married and those who had opted for single rooms at considerably more cost couldn't believe our good luck either. They were mad. But it’s nice to have the poor people sometimes rewarded for being willing to put up with inconveniences.

We got out at the main hotel, S'Algar, and everyone got their keys. Then we set off up the hill to find out apartment in the complex called Los Naranjos. It was everything that we had been promised. We had a frig and a stove and dishes and pots and pans. Not only did we have a bath and shower, but a bidet, a new experience for me, and also a painful one when I sat in boiling hot water. After that I decided it was more useful for washing sandy shoes. 

We had tons of closet space and hangers to burn. Our holiday in Turkey seemed even more of a joke, when we remembered the room we had to share there. A nice joke. We never, ever said a bad thing about our Turkey trip, despite all the inconveniences.

Pat, being a very organized person, said, "Let's quick find a supermarket and get our lunch things organized." So we consulted the map of the resort and sure enough, there was a supermarket only a few blocks away. We bought drinks - Martini for me and Cinzano for her, and loads of soft drinks. I got crisps and nuts, which Pat didn't like. And we got apples.

We got back, put on our swimming suits, sat in the sun on the balcony and kept saying, "I just can't believe this." It was perfect. The temperature was just right. The room was marvelous. The food was what we wanted, and we had the whole week to explore the island and play bridge until we were sick of it. After lunch (Pat had brought cheese triangles and crackers and we had left over bread rolls from the breakfast on the plane), I had a little nap and Pat went down to explore the pool.

It was quite a good sized pool- very clean. All around were white plastic deck chairs which were surprisingly comfortable. Pat, being a sun worshiper, and already very brown from our good English weather for the past few months, courtesy of the Greenhouse Effect, settled down for a few hours of serious browning. I was very cautious, having had only one time in the sun previously, so I decided that 20 minutes in the hot sun on the first day after the hottest sun was over would do me.

So about 3:30 I moseyed down to the pool. Pat had had a swim. She said the water was lovely, and I should come in. But I didn't believe her. I remembered that she'd said the same thing about the water in Turkey which was colder than the stuff coming out of our fridge. So I did my 10 minutes on each side - noticing that nobody in our party was going topless. I had worried about that. I wouldn't have wanted to, and wouldn't have, but it would have been upset to have been the only topped person. After this delightful first taste of the sun, Pat and I went back to our apartment for another drink and to change into shorts for me and slacks for her, and we set out to explore our bit of the island.

By now it was about 4, and we had a welcome drink and opening remarks scheduled for 5:30 at the hotel, then supper was scheduled for 7 with bridge at 8. We knew everybody dressed for dinner and bridge, so we planned to be back to get ready about 5 or so. First we walked down the road back to the hotel, and then past the hotel to the other swimming pool, which the single-roomed and married couples and other hotel guests had. It was larger than ours, but much fuller. In our pool if 5 people were in at one time - that was unusual.

Their pool was right on the beach, but the beach wasn't sandy. It was hard sharp lava rock. There was an area where boats slipped in and off and a swimming area had been designated there with ladders to get into and out. I think the water was immediately very deep, but we never actually went swimming in the sea, so I'm not too sure what it was like. We walked along the coast and were amazed by the numbers and types of wild flowers. Every little rocky crevice had some yellow or orange or blue flowers peeping out of it. There were no sea shells - no sea weed. This was the Mediterranean - not tidal. There were waves, and I commented on this, but apparently they were due entirely to wind. Menorca is apparently very windy in winter.

The island itself is about 5 miles across from north to south and 15 miles long. The centre bit has some largish hills, but the rest of the land is flat. The northern half is used for farming, but the southern part where we were, didn't seem to support much agriculture. We saw tall corn, and big potato plants and other vegetables, but no big fields of wheat, and virtually no animals. We walked through the little streets where there were pubs, other apartment blocks and a few shops. The shops were not of much interest to us, souvenior shops mainly, another grocery store, a shoe shop, a pottery shop that also had branches of rain forest trees which apparently grew when put in water, and a gift shop. We just gave a quick glance into each and went on about our tour.

We turned to the left at the bottom on the island and saw the beauty of the coast as it went northwards - jagged cliffs jutting into the sea - the beautiful clean turquoise sea. We walked along the sea on the hard sharp prominances, until we nearly fell into the craters between the rocks, and decided it was too hard work. I was so pleased I'd taken my ugly old loafers. I'd packed delicate sandals, but they not only were very uncomforable and wouldn't stay on, but they would have been cut to pieces by these rocks. As it was, by the end of the week, the soles of my loafers had dozens of cuts in them, and let water in freely. We took a few pictures, and retraced our steps at a leisurely pace back to our apartment, stopping first at the hotel to buy postcards. The selection was very disappointing but since sending postcards was a high priority for me, I got some, wrote them, and then was told, no stamps would be available until noon the next day. We got used to manyana being the way in Minorca, just like it is in Spain.

We changed into pretty dresses and retraced our steps from our apartment to the hotel, and down to the lounge where all our group were assembled to find out what was what. Pauline told us a little about the plans for the week. We had two excursions scheduled that we could book. One on Wednesday was a boat trip to Mahon and a visit to the gin factory. And on Friday morning, a trip up the Mountain to a very special church and a tour around the island was planned. We signed up for the second. I would have liked to have done the boat trip too, but Pat had already done a similar trip the last time she had been in Minorca, and felt it would be better to get a trip from the place where she had stayed, Villa Carlos, as she remembered how good it had been.

We were then given our free drink - a fruit and fruit juice mixed with red wine and brandy - whose name I cannot at this moment remember. Those sitting with us were worried about the ice cubes made from local water- so they asked the waiter to bring them drinks without ice cubes. He obliged, although I'm quite sure he just brought back the same glasses but without ice - so the contamination was still there. I opted for ice cubes, but he had miscounted so Pat and I got extra cubeless drinks too, which we certainly weren't going to waste. I've remembered now - Sangria.

Pauline had explained the bridge sequence for the week to us. We were playing Chicago for the first night, duplicate the second, the next two nights would be team bridge. I knew that our only hope of winning at team bridge was to have good partners, so I asked Margaret and Mollie, who was reputed to be very good, to partner us. Margaret said she was very pleased at the compliment - but it was really Mollie I was thinking of when I asked them. Margaret goes to both my class and Pauline’s. She's been playing three years and is easily one of the best in my class.

We did a bit more wandering after the drinks, and then went up to dinner. We noticed everyone was waiting outside until the magic time of 7 o'clock. When the doors were opened, those who were first were led to their places by the maitre d'i- a stiff starchy looking man. Somebody in front of us said, "Let's just go and sit down," so we all rushed in at once, and tried to find tables.

The man was not amused. "You must wait to be seated", he said, very critically.

So Pat said, "Two of us from 1B", and he showed us where to sit with another dirty look. The places were laid with silverware and wine glasses, but the procedure, once you had been assigned a table was to help yourself from the large central area where all the food was laid out. For first course, you could have soup, and rolls, and/or salad of every imaginable kind. The second course usually gave three choices, one of them being vegetarian. The first day the choice was chicken or fish or macaroni cheese, with green beans. Then for afters, again you had a choice of baked apple, cake, pastry, ice cream or fruit. The wine waiter came to see if we wanted wine, but we did without drinks at our meal, and rushed back home for a quick drink before we played bridge. They didn't serve coffee with the meal, but lots of people bought it afterwards at the bar downstairs.

The bridge was played at another hotel, the San Luis, just up the hill a bit from our apartment. We had a whole room to ourselves, and 14 tables were put out for bridge. Pauline had announced that the first night would be Chicago bridge, and after the 4 hands, losers would move, and all change partners. Pat hates playing like that because most people don't know her system (Fishing Club) and that means she has to play in theirs (Acol) which she doesn't enjoy. I think we must have had 6 or 7 rounds, and I never moved at all. I did lose the last round, but that was the end so I didn't need to admit it by moving. My score was 2nd high - and Mollie had come first. We finished fairly early- people were tired, and tempers were not terribly good. My friend Teresa was very upset because one of her opponents had sworn at her and been very rude. She is not a very good bridge player, but not the worst either.

There were a lot of complaints because a local band was playing for dancing for the hotel residents and they were just under our window. Also, having 54 people in the room on a hot night made it very noisy and very stuffy. So Pauline decided she would do things somewhat differently in future.