It’s that time of year again when the world’s best beaches, most beautiful locations luxurious hotels, best hotel breakfast etc., are rolled as people start thinking about their Easter and Summer holidays.
Well, this week National Geographic has hailed Valldemossa as “the most beautiful place in the world.”
According to the highly prestigious magazine: “Just 24 kilometres separate Palma de Mallorca from Valldemossa, and it is a pleasure to drive along them. The Ma-110 road winds up and down between bends that adapt to the mountainous geography of the north of the island. You leave behind some cyclists who suffer and enjoy at the same time with each pedal stroke. The landscape is dotted with orchards, cultivated fields and proud olive trees. Before arriving, a turn-off serves as a viewpoint and gives you a glimpse of the magical presence of the village”.
Travel writer Jose Alejandro Adamuz goes on: “Perched on the Tramuntana mountain range, its silhouette is silhouetted against the sky like a cubist composition in ochre colours, above which the tower and façade of the Royal Charterhouse, the refuge of the writer George Sand and the composer Fryderyk Chopin, stand out. Both arrived in Mallorca a few years before Santiago Rusiñol*, in November 1838, aboard a steamer called El Mallorquín. This is how the island should always be reached, by boat. Sand and Chopin stayed at the Valldemossa Charterhouse in search of a remedy for the romantic illness that was tuberculosis.”
No wonder Valldemossa has been a second home to Michael Douglas for the past 30 years and was visited by President Bill Clinton during a state visit to Spain. King Charles also loved to paint it when he came to the island as a young prince.
* It was actually several decades before Rusiñol first travelled to Mallorca.