Mallorca For Less Than €22 A Day (per person)

Mike & I enjoyed a 19-day beach vacation to Port d'Alcudia, Mallorca in Spain earlier this month.  Our budget was non-existent because this trip was a surprise, meaning we had no holiday savings and any money spent would be out of our personal savings, which goes towards essentials like Mike's tuition and rent.  Thus, we tried to do as much as we could with as little as possible while still enjoying ourselves and not allowing our limited funds to hinder our experience.

We found a screaming deal on our hotel, Bellevue Club, at Booking.com.  Bellevue Club is a resort with several pools and several buildings, a bit off the strip in Port d'Alcudia but with balconies and kitchenettes and only €405 for all 18 nights (self-catering).  We had originally wanted to stay in Port de Pollensa, so for this great deal we had to sacrifice on location, but not by much.  Port d'Alcudia was only a short €3 return bus ride away from Port de Pollensa.  Happily, it turned out we liked Port d'Alcudia more than we liked Port de Pollensa, so the sacrifice wound up being well worth it.

We spent €121 on dining out and €158 on groceries.  We ate a lot of chorizo and baguette lunches and alcohol was amazingly cheap at €1.09 for 1.5l sangria and less than €5 for 70cl of vodka and whiskey.  Our dinners were variations of rice, chorizo, anchovies, sardines, and pasta.  Mike is a great cook and had us eating quite well during our stay especially given the simple ingredients.  We did manage to eat out a few times, enjoying tapas for my birthday (€20), doner kebabs twice (€30), and burgers for Mike's birthday (€22).  We also discovered carne empanadas, which we will crave often, and enjoyed them thrice (€9), each time from a different bakery.

We spent €97 on travel, mostly on intercity buses.  The bus ride to Soller was much more than we expected, €19 for two single tickets.  On that day we also spent €20 for two single scenic train tickets to Palma from Soller, €3 for two single bus tickets from Deia to Soller (we hiked to Deia, a lovely three hour walk), and €11 for two single bus tickets from Palma back to Port d'Alcudia.  That was our most expensive day and didn't even include any food since we had packed our meals (chorizo and baguette).

Other costs were €15 for a dos personas kayak rental for an hour, €5 for internet access (our room did not include internet), and €6 for flip flops for Mike (he didn't have any and they are required for a beach vacation).

All told, we spent €807 over our 19 days in Mallorca, which works out to €21.83 per person per day.  We had a great time and didn't really feel hindered by our budget much.  However, we would've enjoyed renting a car for a day to explore the rest of the island and renting bikes at least once during our stay.  We had wanted to SUP on the Med but, surprisingly, there weren't any SUP boards available for hire and we only saw one person even attempting it.  We rented the kayak to at least get out on the water and it proved sufficient but SUP-ing on the Med is still on my wish list.