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	Queen Victoria Cruise Voyage V913: Mediterranean Medley II - 17th-30th August 2009 Day 10: 26th August - Palma, Mallorca
	This is the record of a 13 night cruise taken on board Cunard's Queen Victoria from Southampton on 17th August 2009. This page covers Wednesday 26th August in Palma, Mallorca. We arrived at Palma at the start of another hot sunny day. I photographed the vintage Soller train departing, and took a trip on the new metro from the impressive underground rail and bus interchange. The temperatures again made energetic sightseeing difficult, and so spent te rest of the visit wandering the maze of streets in the old town, where it was relatively cool. As Queen Victoria departed in the evening, we had a brief but very heavy thunder storm, the only rain we saw on the whole 13 night cruise until arriving back in Southampton.

La Seu is Cathedral in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, was built on the site of an existing Arab mosque. It is 121 metres long, 55 metres wide and 44 meters of nave height. Designed in Spanish "levantino" Gothic style with influences of the North European gothic, it was founded by King James I of Aragon in 1229 but finished only in 1601. It sits overlooking the Parc de la Mar and the Mediterranean Sea, protected by the old town walls. There are currently peregrines nesting high up on the east side of the cathedral which fly around the building preying on swifts and rock pigeons.

Fifty years after a restoration of the Cathedral had started, Antoni Gaudí was invited in 1901 to take over the project. While some of his ideas were adopted - moving the choir stalls from the middle nave to be closer to the altar, as well as a large canopy - Gaudí abandoned his work in 1914 after an argument with the contractor. The project was cancelled soon after. (www.wikipedia.com)

Bellver Castle (Catalan: Castell de Bellver) is a circular castle on a hill above Palma de Mallorca. It was built in the 14th century for King James II of Aragon. It was used as a military prison during the 18th and 19th centuries. Now it is one of the main tourist attractions of the island. One of Bellver Castle's most famous prisoners was intellectual and writer Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, who was imprisoned there in the first decade of the 19th century.

It was used as a prison in the 1950s, a period where many people where still being prosecuted for their loyalty and commitment to the Republic during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). After the Civil War, the insurgents, being victorious in part through the aid of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and also the reluctance to come to the aid of the democratic Spanish Republic by such major European powers as Great Britain and France, the leader of the Nationalist-Falangist rebellion, Francisco Franco, established a dictatorship that would last until his death in November 1975.Some estimates put the total number of executed prisoners in Spain in the first decade of the dictatorship as high as 60,000, some of whom may have spent time incarcerated in Castell de Bellver. (www.wikipedia.com)

The Metro de Palma is an electrified metre-gauge line in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. It consists of nine stations and was constructed between 2005 and 2007 at cost of €312 million. Trains run daily from 6.15 am to 11 pm. The Metro opened on April 25, 2007. It runs from the underground Estació Intermodal at Plaça d'Espagna to the University of the Balearic Islands. Spanish authorities suspended operations on the subway system in September 2007 due to repeated flooding. Services restarted on 28 July 2008, after a 46% cost overrun.

Costa Pacifica was launched in June 2008 and delivered in July 2009. She was the second of four 114000grt cruise ships ordered for Costa Cruises from Sestri Cant. Nav. SpA, Genova (Yard No: 6148). The first, Costa Concordia, was delivered in 2006 (Yard No: 6122). Yard numbers 6188 and 6189 are due for delivery in 2011 and 2012.