Family fun in Majorca

Ginny Scott on 27 July 2008
For the second summer in a row, we have had our main summer holiday in Majorca. Travelling with a 5yr old means short flights, a guarantee of sunshine and great accommodation are essential as is the proximity to sandy beaches when carrying all her plastic buckets, spades and inflatable paraphernalia!!

The North East part of Majorca is really quite pretty with great sandy beaches and pine forests all backed by a series of mountains. Even the one hour drive from the airport is really quite lovely, with beautiful shrubs lining the carriageway. Ca’n Picafort isn’t perhaps the world’s prettiest resort with its array of typical tourist shops, bars and fast food venues but the beach is soft clean golden sand and the clear blue sea offers shallow safe bathing with gentle waves on a windy day.

The Grupotel Gran Vista in Ca’n Picafort really met all our needs. It has both typical hotel rooms and also two blocks of one bedroom apartments which sleep up to 4 people. The accommodation is really quite good and definitely of a 4* holiday standard. Having the one bedroom apartment gave us two separate sleeping areas, two great sized balconies, kitchen and dining area. Having a dining table too is a fantastic asset for parents of a 5yr old who is determined to be an artist when she grows up!

Food is a really emotive factor for families and because the local area was fairly limited in offering mainly fast food, we needed a hotel with a good standard half board option. Buffets are great for children as they can pick and choose and try different things knowing they can get more or something different if they don’t like it. Our daughter loved having fresh fish off the grill and she adored the Gilthead fish.

We didn’t use the children’s club and I think because the English are in the minority, this may be a problem if we had wanted too.

The most fantastic thing about this property is the pool area, or should I say pools. There was one fitness pool where they offer lessons, and then several freeform pools in the pine tree shaded gardens, two of which are fantastic for children. Not only that but reserving sun beds is forbidden and quite honestly even when you went down to the pool at 11am, you would be able to find sun beds somewhere.

We went out to explore nearby beaches, Alcudia which is a short drive away as is Pollensa, as well as places such as Porto Cristo and Cala Ratjada which are a bit further away. Driving is really easy out there, and having an air conditioned car is a must. It is also imperative to pre-book your vehicle as we did: the queues at the airport were long, troublesome and we got an exceptional rate by booking early.

There are loads of activities to do locally including hiking, mountain biking as well as the various island excursions which were on offer.

In summary we had lovely holidays both times, and enjoyed the quiet efficiency of this property. I don’t normally travel back to the same place twice but it really delivered a good quality holiday. I would recommend this holiday!