Prologue: April 3-4 San Francisco to Club Del Sol, Port de Pollenca

 
Packing our bikes the day before, we got onto the plane and arrived in Copenhagen before transiting to the Mallorca flight. Unlike other airlines, rather than make us take the bikes to oversized luggage, the airline took the bikes directly at the bag drop and told us it would be checked all the way to Palma. The flight was uneventful despite a late start, and the dreaded EES system while slow, was no big deal as we walked quickly to the passport control and were close to the beginning of the line. They took pictures and fingerprint and stamped our passports.

Arriving at Mallorca, the first thing we saw when we exited our gate was a picture of cyclists riding! That put me in a good mood right away. SAS did a good job on the bikes, which arrived at the same time we did in luggage claim.

As promised, the hotel’s taxi operator met us at the exit to the baggage claim, and led us straight to the shuttle which had a trailer just for our bike boxes. He helped me put all the boxes in the trailer, and we got in and he drove us all the way for 115 Euros.

For this trip, we’d elected to stay at Club Del Sol, which was exactly in between Port Pollenca and Alcudia. You get a 10% discount for booking fairly early, and we’d booked half pensions for the entire week. Stephan and his family had already arrived a few days ago, since they were based out of Germany. In fact, they’d already ridden the Cap Formentor, which was the lighthouse ride I’d missed the last time I was on the island in 2019.

We’d arrived too late to put together the bikes, plus Xiaoqin and Bowen were hungry so they went to dinner at the hotel’s buffet while I checked us in. The hotel’s bike shop was already closed, but we were allowed to store our bike boxes at the hotel’s luggage room. We went to bed, with me dreading the impending jet lag.