I’ve done a horrible job of keeping up with this blog in 2025. Things have been a little busy… the small matter of planning a wedding took up much of the first five months of the year, and since then I’ve been tied up in work deadlines and word counts.
It’s also been difficult to write about “wandering”, since we’ve mostly stayed in one place (Palma). Come autumn, we will very likely be heading back to the UK for a while, putting “pause” (but not stop!) on my travel blogging days.
But with some wheedling, I managed to persuade Sam that we needed one last summer of the nomadic life we’ve come to love. Which is how we found ourselves spending July and August in a little residential town a short walk from Colònia de Sant Pere, a quaintly beautiful fishing village on the north-east coast of Mallorca.
Since we started travelling, our luggage situation has spiralled from two backpacks to three huge suitcases (in my defence, one was packed full of wedding favours and the general paraphernalia getting married seems to require!)
But this summer we’ve scaled right back to the backpacks and moved into a tiny, minimal apartment that might be my favourite (even if it is the smallest) Airbnb of all the ones we’ve stayed in.
Life here has a slow rhythm to it. Sunrise runs or yoga, followed by a dip in the sea to cool off, and a coffee from Can Kiwi, a gorgeous Ibiza-style coffee and juice bar in the nearest town. We work under the air con or in the shade through the hottest part of the day, siesta in the afternoon, and head out in the cool of the late afternoon and evening to stroll along the beach and swim.
Dinner usually consists of fish on the BBQ and a salad cobbled together from whatever looked good in the Agromart - watermelon, cucumber, feta cheese and mint has been a particular favourite. And after dinner, I curl up in the hammock in our garden with my Kindle, where I’ve read more books than I have in a long time; or we head back along the beach and swim under the stars.
Our plans mainly involve spending as much time on and in the water as possible, with a bucket list in the Notes app on my phone that includes hiring a rib, paddle boarding, kayaking and a list of beaches around the North of the island we want to explore.
After the craziness of wedding season, it’s exactly what I needed. A chance to slow down and reconnect with the reasons why we first decided to travel. A summer scheduled around sunrises and stargazing instead of appointments and meetings. A pause before we enter the next chapter of life, whatever that looks like.
From the moment we arrived and our Airbnb hosts, Xavi and Nica, took us on a tour of the surrounding areas, I knew I was going to love this place. We are a two-minute walk from beautiful rocky coves ideal for snorkelling (we’ve already spotted grouper and octopus), a five-minute walk from a natural park (where I am hoping to see one of the resident tortoises before we leave) and a ten-minute walk from a perfect golden sandy beach that’s unspoilt and never too busy. Bookmarking the residential area where we live are two pretty towns, Colònia de Sant Pere and Son Serra de Marina, which between them have a handful of restaurants and coffee shops strategically positioned so you never have to miss a sunset.
Even though we have four weeks left here, and a holiday to the Greek islands to look forward to next, I can already tell leaving is going to feel bittersweet. Which is why I wanted to add a blog entry to capture this feeling so that one day, when life feels more hurried, I can look back on this time and remember how it felt to watch the sunset with nowhere to be. To fall asleep in the gently rocking hammock and dappled afternoon shade. To lie back in the shallow turquoise waters and float for a while.
Until next time,
Katie x
Our recommendations for Colònia de Sant Pere and the North-east of Mallorca:
Can Kiwi - the coffee shop and juice bar where we’ve been getting our daily coffees para llevar (to go) every weekday morning. On the weekends, we linger longer and drink our cappuccinos on their patio terrace before checking out the local market, or stay for breakfast (their açai bowls are incredible!)
Es Vivers - an amazing Mediterranean restaurant that came highly recommended by our Airbnb hosts. It gets busy, so it’s worth booking ahead for a beachfront table at sunset. The food is incredible and the staff are friendly and impressively multilingual, and the head chef Mario de Luca is usually pottering around the restaurant making sure the food is up to scratch (one evening he even brought us delectable fresh figs while we were waiting for la cent). We’ve been working our way through their pasta dishes and the lobster cappelletti (with pistachio pesto) is the front runner so far.
L’Epicerie Alcudia - Can Kiwi is closed on Thursdays, which sent us on the hunt for a different place to get our morning caffeine fix. A short drive in our hired Fiat 500 (who I’ve named Vivi) and we found this place, a little way along the coast near Platja de Muro. It’s a French bakery that also stocks every Mallorcan speciality you could hope to try (and very good coffee!)
Platja de Muro - an absolutely idyllic stretch of white sand and clear turquoise water that wouldn’t look out of place in the Caribbean, but it’s also home to some major hotel chains and does get busy, so go early. We had it mostly to ourselves at 7am on weekday mornings.
Cala na Clara - one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen, a rocky, unspoilt little cove a short way North of Colònia de Sant Pere. It’s a bit of a scramble to get there but well worth it!
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
-John Lubbock, The Use of Life