Musings on Mallorca: part 3

Of course experiencing local culture is not high on every traveller's list of priorities - as we were often reminded in Mallorca. Some people simply want to lie in the sun and read a book, others just want to have fun with friends, and they don't care where they do it. But when I write, I write with a different audience in mind - one for whom experiencing local culture, language, history, art, and cuisine and so on are just as important than lying by a pool. Unfortunately, Mallorca has for too long focused its sights on promoting sun and sand - or bucket and spade - tourism. And through its efforts to make the holiday experience for sunworshippers cheap and easy, the island has lost much of its culture and destroyed some of its coastline in the process. I'm talking about the wall-to-wall high-rise hotels, the once-pretty coves now backed by ugly concrete apartment blocks, the menus in four languages and featuring beef stroganof and fish and chips, and an abundance of tacky souvenir shops, Irish bars, British pubs, betting shops, and lap-dancing clubs. This is what I don't like about Mallorca. Mass tourism in its ugliest form. And sadly, it can be a challenge to escape it. It's not a handful of towns that have given over to package tourists, as is the case in Cyprus, but a whole stretch of coastline west of Palma, another in the north, and dozens of other spots in the east and south. And don't think Mallorcans are happy about this. Most we met are not - especially the younger generation - but they seem powerless to do anything about it and admit they've lost control. Why? Because much of the development is foreign-owned. Mallorca makes a great case study for how not to develop tourism. But on a positive note, it's also a brilliant candidate for an experiment in sustainable tourism and how to turn a destination around.

Musings on Mallorca: part 2

So what did we not enjoy about Mallorca? Well, Mallorca is not for everyone. Sure, that could be said about a lot of places, but there are some destinations that few people dislike: Paris, Italy, Thailand for instance. And perhaps it's just that - despite the stunning landscapes, fascinating people, beautiful hotels and fabulous restaurants - Mallorca is not for me. Would I go there again? To work, absolutely. I'd happily go back and talk to the island's talented chefs or write about its burgeoning wine industry. Off-season though. Would I go there on holidays? No, most probably not. And for us, that's one of the criteria we use to judge a destination. If it's the kind of place where I think "I'd prefer to be lying on that beach than writing about it" or a place I make a mental note to return to one day, then I place it fairly high on my list of great destinations. But it's more complex than that. There are other things I disliked about Mallorca. Mainly, that Mallorca did not feel like Spain. Nor did it feel Catalan. Juxtaposed with Barcelona, where we spent five days after Mallorca, that was even more apparent. Barcelona is a cosmopolitan, multicultural city, immensely popular with tourists, with a reasonable-sized expat population - yet it's still retained its unique Catalan identity and essential Spanish-ness. Mallorca, sadly, has lost a lot of the characteristics that make it Mallorcan. They are still there, of course - the language, cuisine, arts and crafts, traditional customs, etc - they're just very hard to find. We located them of course - because that's what travel writers do - but I continually wondered how tourists there for a week fared. Mallorca is a place where you most definitely need to use a quality guidebook, follow some good local blogs, have a local guide, or quickly make local friends, if you want to experience the 'real' Mallorca - or as the Mallorquins like to say, 'the other Mallorca'. Unfortunately, for most tourists visiting the island, the closest they'll get to Mallorcan culture are artificial experiences (as fun as they can be) like La Granja, pictured.

A night at the opera in Verona, or, When is opera not opera? When it's pure spectacle

We should have known this wasn't going to be a normal night at the opera when the crowd at the Arena at Verona started doing the Mexican wave. I'd only seen the Mexican wave at the football, so it was quite a shock - at the opera no less, but at Verona's Arena? But maybe that should have been less of a surprise, given that the ancient Roman amphitheatre - Italy's most perfectly preserved and built in AD30 - was a venue for gladiator matches long before it showed Aida. Admittedly, the opera hadn't started yet. Well, it had eventually begun after a lengthy delay of a couple of hours, as the mightiest and most foreboding black clouds we'd ever seen started rolling in before deciding to settle upon us. But then the performance was stopped soon after so the stage hands could batten down the set after the wind began to howl, knocking over an ancient Egyptian pillar or two that had so far stood the test of time. But the dramas had begun much earlier that evening...

When I'd gone to collect the tickets I'd been told would be easy to get from the press office, naturally they weren't there. Although I was encouraged to come back later while they would "see what they could do", when I returned there were no tickets, the opera was about to begin, and (despite showing my business cards and referring to the letters of commision I'd previously emailed; we were there researching guidebooks, you see), the guy in the press office melodramatically accused me of simply trying to get seats for free. I reacted appropriately, turning on my heels and storming off to the box office, determined to buy the most expensive seats left in the house and return to throw them in his face, then head off to dinner. However, when I asked the woman at the box office what seats were left and explained our predicament, she sincerely apologised - unfortunately there weren't any decent seats left, they'd sold out weeks ago, but she'd give me a couple of tickets up top for free! Thinking this must be karma, I forgot about the press guy and we charged in and hurriedly hiked all the way up to the top section to our giddy-inducing seats, well, um... steps. A couple of hours and a couple of beers later, and somewhat lightheaded from the altitude, we were being rained upon as those around us rose and cheered with each Mexican wave.

We contemplated leaving several times, but we couldn't. We were working after all and needed to experience this. However, when Aida finally started, we were wishing we had. From those seats up in the clouds we could barely hear the opera. We could barely see it either, but we had expected that, however, we somehow expected the acoustics (or speakers) would carry the sound. No such luck. All we could hear were the giggles and nonsense-talk of the American teenage girls in the last row behind us as they sent text messages and took photos of each other on their cell phones. And just as the Mexican wave had begun so a tidal wave of bored chatter started. People began showing eachother their new iPhones and their holiday photos. Nobody could hear anything, but nor did they seem interested in watching either. It suddenly dawned upon me... the people up here weren't really there for the opera. It was all about the spectacle. If they had come for the opera they'd have bought the expensive seats down below weeks ago, the seats where you could actually see the stage and hear the sound. They just wanted to be able to say they'd been. Or to prove they had by showing their friends a photo.