Mahón, Maó or is it Mô?

They're all one and the same place of course, the city we've known as Mahón, capital of Menorca, the place where mayonnaise was first made.

It was a beautiful sail in early yesterday morning, into this, one of the world's largest natural ports (second only to Pearl Harbour) and we were glad to have woken early enough to see it.

We arrived on time, enjoyed breakfast before heading out for our tour - a shortish morning tour of three small towns and an overview of the eastern part of the island.

We were struck by how rural this island is compared with Majorca and both realised how little we remembered from a family holiday here when Edward was a toddler.

Our first stop was at Fornells, a charming small harbour town which was quiet at this time of the day. We took a walk along the promenade, had a look in the small market and stopped for a while by the boats, enjoying the warm sunshine and peaceful atmosphere.

These traditional boats, called llauts, were moored neatly awaiting some action, which arrived soon afterwards when a fisherman sailed into the harbour in his fibreglass shell with his radio playing loud music. We watched him moor his small dinghy, secure it with a rope to a fixed float and then sit back with his phone in his hand and await…what? We had no idea!

We'd kept an eye on the time and needed to be back at our meeting place before too long. Our guide was unimpressive though - he'd arrived late for our pick up this morning and seemed mostly focused on explaining where the public loos were!

On our way back, I noticed these cute fridge magnets like little Menorcan sandals. We've seen these sandals here and there during the last few days and I took a quick look at some in a shop nearby. With 20% off they could be a bargain, but those I liked were €89, which would still be more than I wanted to spend on sandals I didn't really need.

From Fornells, we drove along the harbour, heading for our next stop.

It was quite a landmark and already visible on top of the tallest hill around, about 300m high.

The Santuario de la Toro is a place of pilgrimage on top of the hill known as El Toro. The road up there was steep and twisty and we arrived to find a busy car park with very limited space.

Whilst we looked around, enjoying the views and savouring the cool fresh air, those trying to park their car were at sixes and sevens, because not only were there no empty spaces but there was nowhere to turn around either. Two of the three coach parking spaces were occupied and drivers were trying to turn around in the third. Why wasn’t there some form of control up here to prevent further cars creating yet more havoc?

Thankfully, not our problem! We looked out over the sparsely populated rural landscape, suprisingly agricultural in nature.

We could see the white village of Fornells from where we'd just come, sitting at the mouth of another lovely harbour.

We took a look around the small church and I wondered what happens outside when there's a service happening, on Sunday mornings, say? Or Christmas? Easter? It must surely be impossible in that car park!

We had one last stop on our itinerary, the small town of Binibeca where the narrow street was filled with restaurants, bars and cafes, leaving the narrowest of pathways down which to walk. Clearly a private community, we felt a little awkward here and didn't really find anything if interest beyond the somewhat artificial looking buildings. So reading the description of it later as “a bit of a theme park” I'd have to agree.

We returned to Mahon shortly afterwards, driving along the waterfront and past the Xoriguer Gin distillery, back to the ship. It had been a strange morning and although we were glad we'd seen some of the island, it seemed as though there wasn't that much to see. Add to that a dull and uninspiring guide who spoke in a halting monotone and we felt we'd not really seen the best Menorca had to offer.

Never mind, we did have a splendid view of the city from our verandah and sat quite happily watching the world go by for a while.

I even spotted a stall selling those Menorcan sandals and wondered whether to run down there and investigate. But did I need more sandals? Not really.

Having said that, did I really need the ham and cheese toastie lunch brought by room service a few minutes later? Of course not, but it was delicious!