I was up early this morning and was able to see the sunrise over the Mediterranean Sea. Beautiful!
We took an drive into the countryside of Mahon, which is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and visited a family farm that makes cheese.
Cheese is made from cow’s milk so we went to visit the cows. An interesting site was the “brushing station.” The cows appeared to love the rolling brush and would turn to get as much of their body as possible to get a brush treatment.I wondered if this makes them “happy cows” like a commercial on tv claims for their butter. 🤣
Of course if you have cows, you need feed as well so we walked a short way to see where they would separate the seed from the stalks. After separating, the seeds were then trampled upon by horses to release the seeds from the husks. To keep ants from carrying the seeds away, a lip was created with the concrete wall and the ant would fall down as it tried to navigate up over the lip. After numerous tries, it would give up. Ingenious!
The farm also had pigs (for sausage), goats (for goat’s milk and goat cheese), and chickens (for eggs to eat), and horses (used for work horses). They also grew grapes and made their own wine. The standard deal for tenant farmers was to split the income 50-50 with the land owner.
Our next stop was to Binibeca - a white-washed fishing village overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The “old” homes, known as Binibeca Vell, were built in the 1970s. Rather than building high rise homes, the architect designed an integrate maze of 165 homes connected with narrow walkways and arching staircases. If you look closely at the pictures you can see the house numbers. You would also see many signs asking visitors to be quiet as the area has become quite a sightseeing/tourist spot. Each year the houses are painted chalk-white and the home owners pay a portion based on their exterior square footage.
We had a 4 course lunch at a wonderful restaurant at Sa Pedrera des Pujai in the village of Cala en Porter. Owner/chef, Daniel Mora, has added modern touches to old recipes and we all really enjoyed our lunch. We began with stuffed green olives and sobrasada ( red spreadable sausage) on crostini, followed by cold tomato soup with fig and fig gelatin. Red and white wine flowed throughout the meal. Two men (from the kitchen) came out carrying this huge pizza pan of seafood paella. They served us each a huge portion that contained shrimp, squid, beef, and chicken mixed with a flavored rice. Other seafood protein may have been mixed in there, too. Delicious! Dessert was apple pie with a surprise - a special filling hiding under the ice cream. The pie crust was a phyllo style crust. I know we have put on some pounds since we started this trip.
Tomato soup was poured into these bowls. Very nice to have a cold soup as it was a warm day.
There was a captain’s reception where happy hour was extended for 3 hours (and it was free 😄). Two of these and I was done.
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