Sad face

It's been extremely difficult to find good Wi-fi. hopefully we will be able to publish this tomorrow! We were in Palma de Mallorca today and finally found a cafe with free Wi-fi but it was slow- extremely slow and we could barely receive our emails. (Thank you my girls for sending me emails! I'm feeling very homesick right now!!)

The restaurants that I had picked out for this stop were extremely promising but really none of them turned out! The bakery this morning had rave reviews from at least 4 sources but the pastries were cold and uninspiring. The latte was good though so I held out higher hopes for lunch.

Lunch,however, just went from bad to worse. The Wine Garage was in the sexy,hip part of town and the menu looked incredible but when we got there the owner greeted us with bad news- their chef was extremely ill and couldn't make it in that day so they closed the restaurant!! That would never happen in the States...and no matter what your opinion (I actually thought it was really cool that they were so dependent on their chef that they couldn't open!) it was disappointing all the same. The second place that I had chosen was in a more ethnic neighborhood which I was even more excited about. I was looking for more regional authentic cuisine anyway. We arrived via taxi and they were closed as well. No owner there to explain why this time it was just closed! I was disheartened to say the least but Gary suggested that we go back, closer to the bakery where we had the disappointing pastries and find a cafe there. This is what we did and even though I had a Serrano ham with tomato sandwich and fresh mozzarella caprese salad it was quite disappointing. The cafe reminded me of Cafe DuMode without the sticky floors and tables. They had indoor and outdoor seating areas with waiters in white shirts and black bow ties. The food was fresh but not Spanish. Bert had a California club for goodness sake which looked exceptionally good but certainly not a regional specialty!

We will be in Valencia tomorrow. Karen and Bert are staying on board to rest before we get into Barcelona the following day. Valencia is known for their beautiful hand-painted porcelain so hopefully i can at least do some shopping! I have two restaurants picked out for tomorrow- 2 more chances for some authentic cuisine. I just hope one of them works out! I'm at ~ a 50% success rate right now and feeling pretty low!