We finally beat the snails!

Summer flowers, originally uploaded by Racmol.

This is our third attempt at sunflowers from seed - and the first generation to survive to adulthood.

The best of friends...

Willy and Jules at the Taberna del Temple, originally uploaded by Racmol.

What a heartwarming scene - father and son gazing fondly at each other as they dine out under a plum tree on a balmy summer's evening in Pollenca. And then, quite literally, it all turns to poo.

Two minutes later, when Jules had carted Willy and a complete change of clothes off to the (very small) toilet, all you could hear were bloodcurdling screams. (Mostly William.) The lady at the next table went to the toilet herself and came back shaking her head. 'Ooh, he's struggling in there,' she said cheerfully and picked up her wine glass again. I just smiled ruefully and set about decontaminating the highchair.

However, the holiday wasn't ENTIRELY miserable. We had a great day when we drove up into the mountains to Soller, a small town that was pretty much cut off from the south of Majorca until they put a tunnel in in 1997. It is surrounded by orange groves and quite pretty. From there you can (and we did) take an open-sided tram to Port de Soller, which was where the oranges left for France from and is now a seaside resort. We had a swim and an ice-cream and then caught the tram back again. Then on the way up over the mountain we stopped at some viewpoints for quite spectacular views down to the port.

The day we went to Port de Pollenca was also quite successful - after a morning swim, Fia and Willy both went to sleep in the pushchair while we were walking about looking for lunch so we had a nice quiet tapas or five while they slept.

Our two child-pleasing days were the waterpark (Aqualand) at Alcudia, and Marineland (dolphin show, seals, turtles, aquarium etc) at Palma. Expensive, but the kids loved them.

On our last night in Pollenca, we finally discovered how you eat out with small children in Spain. We tried to go to a fairly nice restaurant and ended up with William shaking and incandescent with rage so we had to leave without having dessert, which was a shame as the menu looked pretty good. So we wandered into the town square, thinking we could at least have an ice cream. And there we found all the residents of Pollenca relaxing with a bottle of wine at outdoor tables while their children ran and scooted around the pedestrianised square in the dark. So we did that, and all was well.

Family holiday in Mallorca receives mixed reviews (Part One)

Fia and Willy on the Formentor Peninsula, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Well, we all survived a week of family togetherness in the old town of Pollenca in the north of Mallorca, although some would argue only just!

We may as well just be honest about this up front - there were some bad moments. In retrospect, when you get stuck driving up the incredibly narrow Calle de Porquer and you realise it's a dead end, the best option is probably NOT to continue driving ACROSS the town's trademark cobbled Calvari steps into a driveway that turns out to be too small to turn around in without scraping the front of the car and destroying a tyre. Luckily a very helpful resident of Calle de Porquer (looking like he'd seen it all before) and his mechanic friend came to our aid and the ordeal was over in an hour or so.

As I was saying, hindsight is a wonderful thing. When I booked the house we were staying in, my main concern was to make sure the pool was well separated from the house, as Europeans don't believe in fencing swimming pools - and it was, being at the top of a section that cascaded steeply down the hill with the house at the bottom. Next time I will ask some more searching questions, such as:
Are there a million steep stone steps on the section with vertical drops off the side and no rails of any kind?
Do you have random glass vases full of dried flowers on the landing half way up your marble staircase? (And if so, WHY? What were you thinking?)

We didn't actually break the glass vase standing on the floor of the landing and nobody fell to their death off the side of the steps, but Jules broke the handle of the freezer door and Willy broke a blue glass bowl, the ceramic base of a bedside lamp and (although this might have been a coincidence) the volume control of the satelllite tv. This probably sounds like reckless vandalism, but actually the freezer door formed a vacuum seal of incredible strength, Willy grabbed the glass bowl off a high shelf while I was holding him and reaching for the remote control for the fan, and he broke the lamp while I was brushing my teeth in the next room. I was happy enough to see him leave the room as the last time he'd been in the bathroom with me he had turned the bidet jet on full and sent a flood of water out into the hallway and then slipped over in it and howled.

I slightly lost patience with the landlady when she came to sort out the satellite tv while we were out (after we'd reported our long list of breakages) and left a large fake Ming dynasty type vase on a low table in the living room, as if she was daring us to break that too!

That probably seems like rather a long moan, and I haven't even got to the liquid poo incidents (one in our bed and one in a restaurant).

And then there was Black Tuesday (or possibly Wednesday, I forget which). When I finally got to bed after the bloodcurdling screams had stopped (17 renditions of Puff the Magic Dragon later), Jules rolled over, yawned and said: 'They're horrible. I don't like them and they've ruined my life.'

Part Two will be the highlights (yes, there were some!), and of course the full details of the liquid poo, which I know you are all anxious to hear more about.