This weekend I went to Mallorca (a lavish, very expensive Spanish island) on a whim. My friends were all going on trips and I hadn't signed up for one thinking I would love to use the weekend for homework and working out and budgeting and doing all the things I keep putting on my to do list and never crossing off.
Well, as the week before approached, I was growing fearful of all those things I absolutely should make time to do and was having serious fomo about my friends' trips.
So first and foremost, I checked flight prices. When you're going to an island that is really far, flying is generally your only option. So I checked skyscanner, which is a fantastic way to find cheap flights. You can search "amsterdam to everywhere" for the dates you want to go somewhere and it will show you the cheapest place to go. Which rocks if you have no where in particular you want to go but a free weekend to go.
Mallorca was one of the first places that showed up, and my friend Claire was going there solo and had already invited me to come (an invitation I declined to do adult things, and now was asking to join one week in advance completely ruining all of her plans... an incredibly childish thing to do when you are trying to be an adult)
Luckily Claire said yes so I bought the ticket
Because I was booking a week in advance, the ticket was 135 euros. This is a lot for a Europe trip between countries so close, but I did it anyway. This is dangerous. I don't regret going, but had I planned well I could have saved a lot more money on this.
Mallorca is not a budgeter's island. It is expensive, and a place that adults with real jobs travel to. It has beautiful beaches that are on magazines, sights you could see in other more cheap places like the Balcans or Thailand, but this is an opportunity that I just couldn't pass up. It is amazing. The water is crystal clear, the beaches are uncrowded and pristine, and the resorts are extravagant.
Anyway, Claire and I decided on renting a car because Mallorca is so big and the busses don't go to the cool beautiful beaches you see in pictures. But, this came with a 160 euro price tag for the weekend. So, we decided we would sleep in the car all but the first night. (We were super worried they wouldn't give us the car because we didn't have an international driver's license and were landing at 9pm, so we wanted a backup plan the first night just in case the car fell through... the license wasn't a problem at all, which is terrible on the company's part but fantastic for us)
We got to Mallorca, picked up the car, and went to our 30 euro airbnb.
The next days were spent at various extravagant beaches and it was such an amazing place.
For food, we went to the grocery store. We ate out three times, and those were all for dinner so we could use the wifi and tell our family we hadn't died or anything (some people aren't super keen on the idea of sleeping in a car). We spent 22 euros at the grocery store on bread, jam, breadstick crackers, cuties, strawberries, raspberries, a gallon of water, and a 6 pack of beer. The nights we ate out, we wanted food that would keep us full, because for breakfast and lunch we were eating lots of empty carbs and unfilling foods. So we went to Mcdonalds (lol), a restaurant where I had a nice chicken dinner, and a pizza restaurant. The first night I spent 7 euros, the second 9 euros, and the third 12.
Sleeping in the car actually rocked. I would definitely not do it alone, ever. Because it is nice to have someone else to calm any paranoia you have about what is outside. The first night, we parked in this nature reserve that probably would have been really cool, but we didn't get there until around 11:45pm, and couldn't see anything around us. This was fine, because we had done research on the area and generally knew it was fine, but there is the worry of the unknown that makes it really hard to sleep. We put our seats all the way back and started a movie I had downloaded on my phone. This is important. Bring as many portable chargers as you can, and download things to keep your mind busy and not thinking (wow there is a serial killer outside). We didn't end up falling asleep for an hour or so, but I was sleeping really soundly. Claire woke me up because she thought she saw a light outside (totally valid), so we left and drove to a hospital parking lot (always a safe bet. Open 24/7, always has security, and always has general public awake. Bad things rarely happen when there is a large population around). From around 3:30am to 7am we slept really good. We could have slept longer, but we wanted to catch the sunrise on the water, so we drove to the beach. We spent the day napping on the beach and reading and just enjoying the sun.
The next night we slept in the parking lot that we had eaten dinner in and it was cool because we could mooch their wifi all night to watch netflix on my computer, which is a really nice solace when it is dark outside, you're uncomfortable, and can't sleep. We woke up once to noise outside, but we knew there was a club across the street and that was why (we felt safer knowing this, that there would be people awake until 4 or 5 the next morning, again- public places are good for safety). I slept SOOOO good this night (by SOOO good I mean a solid 4.5 hours, but it was a really sound sleep). Then we watched the sunrise again, and did the same process of beach naps and sun over again.
I would do this trip over and over again and still choose to sleep in the car. Of course if I could have the car and a rockin' hotel, I would choose that. But, because of our budgets and how expensive hostels on the island are, we had to pick one and 10/10 times I would pick the car to be able to go to the private beaches and beautiful places we did. Being uncomfortable is so worth it to see parts of the world you never could have before.
Budget:
Ticket- 135 E
Accommodation- 15 E
Food- 39 E (plus food at airport)
Car- 80 E
Total = 269 E
This is NOT a budget trip. This is a lavish island, and an island that backpackers don't often get to go to because of how expensive it is. But this is Claire and I doing an incredibly expensive trip scaled down because it was important to see.
Packing list other than the obvious clothes and hygiene products:
Thick large winter coat (for sleeping)
2 sweatshirts
mittens
flashlight
computer
portable charger
5 downloaded movies
kindle
5 magazines