Sunday, May 20, 2007

The Weird

The hunt is on.

In my life as a publisher of tourist guides, I am constantly bombarded by publicity for restaurants etc that emphasises their atmosphere, their sunny terraces, the quality of their food, their specialisms (Spanish restaurants love to announce that they are, inter alia, “specialists in meat”, which has never sounded much an enticement to me, at least).

But what I do not come across, what is never publicised is whether a place is just weird.

Weirdness comes in many guises. Weird location, weird food, weird people. And weirdness is a positive, in my book at any rate. Forget your romantic ambience, I want restaurants, bars, anything that are nuts, strange, left-field, off-the-wall, bonkers. I want ghoulish ambience, ghoulish people, bearded women, restaurants with no food, bars with no drink, the inhabitants of Bedlam.

Where are these places? They must exist. So tell me. The weirder the better. And, rest assured, the weird will be given its place in the sun (irrespective of terrace) on this blog. The rules for the search are that the weirdness must be an advantage and this weirdness would make you return. So, come on ...


Meantime, the merely magnificent. Recently I discovered an astonishing restaurant near Santa Margalida. Hardly a difficult place to discover as it sits next to the main road. Except that is that no-one ever goes to Santa Margalida, which is hardly surprising as there is little worth going for if you are the average tourist. This is a mistake, however. There is a quite impressive church, totally oversized given the size of the town, and an impressively unremarkable monument thing. Santa Margalida would be a good entry for weird towns, for which I invite more input. And it should be noted that the castle-looking affair as you go towards the town belongs to one Demis Roussos, so I was told. Not weird as such, but worth a trek to spot the large Greek.

Anyway, the restaurant is Es Turó, which is part of the very old S’Alqueria des Comte. Very, very impressive. So here´s a piccy.



Manacor’s favourite son and muscle-bound tennis heart-throb, Rafael Nadal, declares in today’s “Sunday Times” that his favourite music includes Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams.

Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams. God forbid.

Go back almost a year - to 27 May last year in fact - to find out why I cannot stand Bryan Adams.


I found out yesterday that Leapy Lee was actually born Graham Pulleyblank. He goes up in my estimation.

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