Day 3: Maó

After finishing the blog last night, we went out for a walk around S'Algar in search of some food.

The restaurant we found turned out not to be great - lots of picking little bits of chicken off the bone - but we did get a nice view of the sunset

When we woke up this morning we found it was another bright sunny day. Quite windy though, so we weren't able to eat breakfast outside on the terrace. Once we'd made the most of the breakfast buffet, we set off on a short drive towards the capital of Menorca: Maó.

Often referred to by its Spanish name - Mahón - Maó is the biggest town on the island, with a population of around 30,000 people.

I'd heard that it can be a difficult place to drive into, with narrow one-way streets, so we parked in a carpark on the outskirts of the town and walked into the centre.

It was a bright, colourful place - and also quite quiet and peaceful on a Sunday morning.

What I hadn't realised in advance is that the town centre is built on a cliff, so we had a downhill walk towards the sea.

We passed some beautiful trees as we made our way towards the port area.

I particularly loved this one with the bright red flowers!

Once we'd made our way down all the steps, we were in the harbour area.

There were three flags flying side by side: the EU, the Spanish and the flag of the Balearic Islands.

I'd booked us on a boat trip around the harbour and it was due to be on this bright yellow boat.

We were a bit early at the moment though, so we had time for a stroll along by the water's edge.

We walked for 15 or 20 minutes in one direction, before turning round and coming back.

It was really pretty and we found a section of road with lots of restaurants; definitely a part of town to return to later.

We returned to the boat area around 15 minutes before it was scheduled to depart and joined a queue of people waiting to board.

We managed to get nice seats outside on the top deck. Soon we were off!

The reason I'd booked a boat trip was that I'd read it was the best way to see the harbour of Maó.

Maó has one of the largest natural harbours in the world; it's around 5km long.

Because of this it's had strategic importance at various times in history, at one point even being ruled by Britain.

The commentary on the boat pointed out the remains of the British naval base on our left.

We could see some of the cannon!

Later we passed some of these unusual wooden structures in the water. The commentary explained that they were to catch mussels.

It really is a huge harbour. As we sailed further along, the coastline became rockier.

We saw the remains of towers and fortresses...

...as well as a man who seemed to be doing some sort of wind-surfing.

When we got to the end of the harbour, the boat stopped for a while.

The water was a beautiful shade of blue here and amazingly clear.

They're a bit hard to make out in the photos, but we soon realised we could see jellyfish swimming in it  

Definitely enough to put you off the idea of going for a swim!

The boat turned around at this point and headed back down the opposite side of the harbour.

We sailed past an island, which the commentary explained had been a quarantine island.

Anyone who had infectious diseases like yellow fever or cholera in the past would have been quarantined there.

Before too long we were getting close to the centre of Maó again.

It looked like a really pretty, colourful place from the sea.

We got back to the main harbour area and set off in search of somewhere to eat.

We ended up in a fantastic Italian restaurant, where Tim had gnocchi bolognese and I had a really lovely pizza.

I wasn't looking forward to climbing back up the steps to the centre of town after that, but it turns out we didn't need to; there's a lift which takes you back up from sea level.

Then all that remained was us for walk back out of town, towards where we'd parked the car.

We took a slightly different route back, seeing some more really scenic parts of town.

It's been another really lovely day in Menorca  And our flight back is quite late tomorrow, giving us another whole day to explore some more of the island!