I have been searching for the best beaches in Europe since 2010, when I got invited on the Costa Deliziosa Western Mediterranean itinerary it was the perfect excuse to find the best beaches in Europe. I sailed through the Balearic Islands, and the Italian coast. Let me tell you, it was the perfect combination of sight-seeing through Europe yet also having some downtime at the beach.
This cruise is when I discovered the ever-enchanting Palma de Mallorca. We arrived in Palma at 8 a.m. and left around midnight, it gave us more than enough time to tour the island, get some beach time and dinner on the boardwalk. The stop before this one was in Ibiza, which before the trip I thought would be the highlight but honestly, Ibiza is completely over-rated. When we got to Palma everything was fairly priced. We took a tour through the hop-on / hop-off bus; it started and ended at the Catedral-Basilica de Santa Maria de Mallorca. Which I should point out is an easy shuttle ride from the cruise port.
The Cathedral is absolutely breathtaking, and you can catch a glimpse of it from many parts of the island. The tour starts there takes you all over the island and then has stop at the Bellver Castle where you can see the amazing viewpoints like the ones below. After spending some time at the viewpoint, we headed back on the bus to the end of the tour.
We then took a cab to the beach, the cab was roughly '14 from the cruise port, rented 2 beach chairs and spent the rest of the day relaxing by the ocean. Out of all of the beaches that I have visited in Europe Palma was by far the best. The sand was nice and cool, after leaving Ibiza and everything there being overly expensive, we were shocked at how cheap everything in Palma was. The beach chairs cost about 12 'to rent. The water was the perfect temperature, I really can’t say anything negative about our day at the beach.
After soaking up the sun and enjoying the water we decided to have a late lunch/early dinner on the board walk before heading back to the ship. There were plenty of restaurants to choose from on the boardwalk with fresh seafood and paella. After some tapas, paella and a few glasses of wine we decided to keep shopping on the boardwalk to dry off before heading back home for the night. It was the most perfect day of our 7-day trip along the Western Mediterranean. Palma will always hold fond memories for me, and I can’t wait to go back and stay at one of their resorts on the beach and really get to enjoy it for more than just 1 day.
