Mahón, Menorca

Pyxis
Karen & Richard
Tue 2 Sep 2008 00:00

Tuesday 2nd September – Mahón, Menorca

39:53.543N 4:16.329E

 

This morning we decided to go into Mahón to look around town and to restock the larder. 

 

On the way across in the dinghy we noticed that a buoy in a more sheltered position had become free and so we aborted our journey, went back to Pyxis and quickly moved her to the new buoy. 

 

We then resumed our trip into town, parking the dinghy at the dock beside the floating restaurant we had used previously.  After visiting the Port Office to tell them we had moved and to settle our dues, we went to tourist information to obtain a map of the town and, just as Richard likes, it was uphill, very steep, all the way!  The shortest route was up a long flight of steps.

 

Mahón is the main town of Menorca and it is lovely; not too big and not too touristy, but it has everything.  This week it is a bit quieter as the main Spanish, French & Italian holidays have just ended and so all the holiday boats crammed in here for July/ August have just left. 

 

We visited the fish market, the main church, the fruit and vegetable market (which has a supermarket in the basement), and then wandered around the many other local sights.  One popular view from the hill was over the harbour directly in line with where Pyxis is moored meaning she will be appearing as the backdrop to a lot of tourist photos of the harbour – we’ll have to be nice and tidy.

 

We found a wonderful hardware shop that had just about everything you could want if you had the time to look around and find it – it was over many floors and had stuff in all the nooks and crannies.  Richard found a fruit hammock (something that I had been looking for) but we didn’t buy it as it seemed to be rather ‘old stock’ as it was still priced in pesetas!  But it was such a charming store we did buy some things.

 

After our long trek around town we called for a drink to recover and then came back to the market and supermarket to do our provisioning.  Trolley was duly pressed into service though it meant we had to follow the road back down the hill to the dockside as the steps were not going to be good news.

 

After a quick bite of lunch on board Pyxis we loaded up the dinghy with our empty jerry cans and headed off to the fuel dock to get some more diesel.  With our main fuel tank full once again it was time for a sundowner...

 

… so we headed off in the dinghy once more, this time to visit the gin distillery, Xoriguer, a little further up the harbour.  We arrived too late to see any gin being made but we were still welcome to sample all the different local brews (at no charge J). 

 

We had the place to ourselves and dutifully tasted the bottles of gin and liqueurs laid out on the tables.  The liqueurs were a bit too sweet for our palate but needless to say we returned to Pyxis armed with a bottle of local gin and some pomada to try.

 

Finally this evening I was treated to a meal cooked by Richard!

 

Tomorrow we may need to have a day off to rest.

 

Mahón

 

© Pyxis 2008