Palma and the Puro experience.

Palma is like a mini Barcelona, with its beautiful Modernist buildings, several similar street names, a semi-cosmopolitan feel with plenty of smart cafes, art galleries and restaurants. The ''Old Town '' near the big Gothic cathedral, La Seu , has been gentrified with spruced up buildings and new smart shops. Interspersed in the labyrinth of cobbled streets, some very narrow in parts, there several old palacios with their courtyards open to display. Seems that several of them are for sale at the moment.

Checked into the Puro Hotel, Palma's new bastion of chic, a 14th century palace beautifully converted to a boutique hotel ''blending modern ethnic elements with bohemian chic and Mediterrannean exotism.'' Within the Oasis Urbano is Opio, its restaurant where we ate a delicious mix of highly overpriced Asian-Med cuisine. Opio is dripping with long strands of shells threaded on jute from floor to ceiling, pristine virgin white splendour with the odd splash of red on the cushions. Looking down from the Opio is the Puro bar with its ''Bargrooves '' beat, hosting an assortment of Eurotrash, old codgers with the odd Russian hooker, a gaggle of doggy drunk English girls who arrived, emitting a shrill cackle that grew worse as the evening went on, three Mallorcan preppy pricks, a swarm of Polish beerboys that entered and departed within minutes. Perhaps the off-season dross ? relieved to hear less German chatter in general....

Scuttled off upto our 'Superior Flow' room , a white airconditioned temple of silence away from the madding crowd below,festooned with several bright cushions made from Rajasthani saris, hand carved Burmese sliding doors, white parrot feather hats from the Bandjon tribes in Cameroon adorned the bedheads, complimenting the white guinea goose feather lamps, with the Purobeat humming gently from the Bose sound system.

Spent the next day in the luxury of the Purobeach .


Tuesday 12th:
At breakfast, saw a bleary-eyed hungover Hammond of Top Gear fame, his hair not spiked, hiding behind a Herald Tribune. Checked out with great memories of Mallorca as a beautiful civilised island with a great mixture of beach, countryside,and city. Shame its so polluted full of fucking Germans !!

Tags: Palma de Mallorca + Puro Hotel + Bargrooves