Play Time in Playa de Palma (Playa de Palma (Majorca))

Member Name: blonde_girl774

Product:	Playa de Palma (Majorca)
Date:	13/08/07 (251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful beach, quite a lively area, very clean.

Disadvantages: Very German based.

After the stress of exams and the absolute delight (not to mention the surprise) after finding out we’d all graduated my flatmates and I decided to book a last minute holiday to celebrate our success. We tried a few travel agents but due to the poor British weather we were told we could expect to pay around £300 - £350 for a week long break. One of my flatmates took it upon themselves to book everything independently over the internet which meant the flights and accommodation were much more reasonable, the only hitch was that we were going to Playa de Palma in Majorca… an area that none of us had ever heard of before!

Location

Playa de Palma is located on the Spanish island of Majorca which is the largest of the three Balearic Islands and is located just off the southern coast of Spain. It’s found in the Mediterranean Sea so it enjoys a favourable year long climate, temperatures regularly reach the high 20s and low 30s in the summer months which means it’s a favourite with tourists during these months. We flew from Liverpool airport which took just under 2.5 hours; I’m led to believe it’s about 2 hours if you fly from the southern airports so it’s quite a short flight time.

Playa de Palma is located on the west side of Majorca, just below the capital city of Palma and the airport. It’s approximately 10km from Palma and about 8km from the airport which means the transfer time is extremely quick – we were only in the taxi for about 12 minutes before we arrived at the hotel. We were warned that there may be some aircraft noise although we found we didn’t hear a single plane during our entire stay. Playa de Palma is located in the middle of C’an Pastilla and El Arenal, we found that when walking it was impossible to tell where one resort began and the other ended as they’ve sort of faded into each other over the years.

The Resort

Playa de Palma is quite a purpose built resort which seems to focus on the wide sandy beach and the surrounding area. The hotels all look typically Spanish as they’re all cream coloured but quite high rise in general which does give the area quite a built up look. Some of the larger hotels don’t fade into the background quite as much and could be considered a bit of a visual eye sore on the landscape here. The season typically starts around April / May and runs until late September where most things seem to shut down until the following year for the winter months.

The focal point of the resort is the long sandy beach which runs for about 6km down the eastern coast of Majorca and joins the three aforementioned resorts together. The beach itself is lovely with gently shelving sand leading into a clear sea which was one of the cleanest I’ve ever seen, you could wade in so the water was stomach high and still clearly see your feet. The beach did get quite crowded in the daytime although we always managed to find a bit of space to lay our towels.

Behind the beach is a long straight road which is lined by palm trees and backed by many restaurants and shops. There’s a mini train that runs the length of the three resorts and is very cheap to use if your feet do get a bit tired at all. There’s a huge variety of tourist style shops and restaurants during the day along this road as well as going further back into the land. The whole area itself is very clean, we didn’t really see much rubbish on the roads during our whole time there.

There’s not really a great amount to do during the day time in the actual resort, there’s multiple water sports on offer and you could easily waste an afternoon browsing around the wide variety of shops but I would advise that you’d need to leave the resort to find further daytime entertainment. We did spend most of our days either on the beach or lying by the pool trying to top up our tans!

If you want to eat out during the day or night then you’ll literally be spoilt for choice by the amount of restaurants. There are your typical fast food places as well as a wide range of English, Italian and Spanish restaurants. You can’t walk for more than 2-3 minutes without encountering a restaurant and during our whole time there we were never stuck for somewhere to eat. We sampled several of the restaurants and found them to be all very reasonably priced, a two course meal and an alcoholic drink typically cost around 10 – 12 euros.

With regard to nightlife it’s here that the area really excels in, after about 9pm at night you’ll find all the PR people attempting to drag you into bars and clubs and from about midnight the area really does get going. In Playa de Palma there’s probably only about 6-8 big clubs but this low number is made up for by the massive number of bars and music bars, there’s probably about 60-70 scattered through the streets. The nightlife is quite central to the resort but most of the main apartments and hotels are set more further inland so the noise was never an issue for us.

There’s a range of apartments and hotels located in Playa de Palma so there should be something to suit everyone. Our hotel was about a 10 minute walk from the beach and the promenade and when we walked there we must have passed at least 20 other apartment complexes and hotels, in total I’d say there was easily 100 different complexes in the resort.

The main negative that we found with the resort is that it is very German based, we encountered only one other group of English people during our whole stay in the resort! The area was bursting with Belgians and Germans who all seemed really friendly and luckily spoke English so we were able to converse quite easily. We were the only English in our hotel so if this would put you off then this really isn’t a resort for you to try!

Points of Interest

The capital city of Palma is a mere 20 minutes bus ride away and we found that there were regular buses from the centre of the resort everyday. Here you can experience much more culture and entertainment as well as take advantage of the huge shopping resources. The biggest water park in Majorca is located in El Arenal and was a mere 10 minutes in a taxi or 15 minutes on a bus. It cost us 20 euros each to a day’s access and also the transport from the hotel was included, we thought this was excellent value as we got there at 11am and it kept us occupied all day. The price for children is 14 euros or it’s 65 euros for a family (2 adults and 2 children). Much of the focus within the actual resort seems to be either hotel based or located on the beautiful long beach where there’s multiple water sports on offer all season.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed my time in Playa de Palma, the beach was beautiful and the nightlife was excellent, even if slightly German orientated at times! I wouldn’t hesitate to go back here for another week as I had such a great time but I wouldn’t really recommend it to older people due to the lively nature of it although it is possible to avoid this by not going out at night. It would suit young groups or couples looking for a bit of nightlife, or families looking for a central resort close of other amenities. The only downsides of the area were the very low number of other British tourists visiting and the fact that each evening we were practically attacked by the Lookie Lookie men trying to force us to buy their knock off goods! There is very little in the way of Spanish culture or sight seeing so if that’s what you enjoy then don’t go here!

Thanks for reading!

Summary: A holiday resort on the island of Majorca.