When was the last time you did something for the first time? With my husband and me it was last year on Friday before Whitsun, the day was drab and dreary and my husband said, ´Let´s go somewhere sunny!´ On Saturday we went to our travel agency and virtually moved round the Mediterranean Sea, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, in the end it was Spain, on Tuesday we were on Majorca, in the resort Cala Millor on the east coast to be precise.

Whose fault is it that Majorca has got this negative image? Well, mass tourism began in the 1950s, people had rebuilt the destroyed cities and reorganised their lives, had some money to spend and decided to spend it in the warm climate of Spain. The Spaniards were clearly overrun by the hordes from Central and Northern Europe (50% of the tourists are German, 25% British, the rest comes from various nations, from Scandinavia mainly but surprisingly even Italians go there in summer), but reacted quickly, all along the coasts enormous and often horrible hotels were built without a coordinating central plan to cash in on the invasion.

Now so-called soft tourism is also offered, people don´t have to lie only on the beaches all day long, they are invited to discover the hinterland, bike tours, horse riding, hiking - all this can be done in small groups or individually, tourists responding to these offers will certainly not think of Majorca as a tourist hell come true.

At the north end of the long bay is a village called Cala Bona meaning ´good bay´, this is a normal village with an active fishing port and rather small hotels which don´t hurt the eyes when looked at from afar. For some reason British tourists are in the majority here. In 1962 the beach stretching further south was discovered so-to-speak, it had been just a beach, but then the seafront was developed, a promenade designed and hotels built, in 1965 the area was given its urban layout thanks to the General Plan for regulating the coastal area. The place got the name Cala Millor meaning ´better beach´, not very original but true; Cala Bona has only very small sandy patches and rocky cliffs, Cala Millor a long stretch of fine sand.

The hotel we stayed in, Hipocampo Playa ****, is situated at the southern end of the beach, it´s a six-storey-high white building of the new generation, together with other similar buildings it does hurt the eye when looked at from afar. My husband and I had long discussions about the disfigurement and mutilation of the coastline, is it really necessary to built hotels so near to the water, couldn´t tourists stay more inland in small inconspicuous hotels and move a bit when wanting to go to the beach? On the other hand, however, we did enjoy the fact that we could get to the seafront directly from the hotel, there´s no street with traffic to cross as is so often the case in seaside resorts.

What is there to do in Cala Millor besides bathing? The resort has a pedestrian precinct with a good selection of shops, but they lack any great variety in the range of products they each stock (mainly leather products and souvenirs). Evening entertainment here is not rowdy and is generally hotel based, although over the past few years a number of more lively bars have started to appear. It´s not possible to eat out in typical Spanish restaurants, there aren´t any, all eateries offer food for all nationalities. While you´re eating a, say, Spanish speciality the tourists at the neighbouring table may be having a German or a British one, an Italian pizza or Greek gyros.