Mallorca: the southwest, the north, and the drive between them

Mallorca is really three islands sharing one number plate. The southwest — Andratx, Camp de Mar, Son Vida — is the yacht-and-restaurant side, twenty minutes from Palma airport and built around marinas. The Tramuntana coast north of Valldemossa is the slow one: terraced olive groves, stone fincas, and a road that takes concentration. The northeast around Pollenca and Alcudia is the family side, with shallow bays and long sands.

Choose by the drive you are willing to make. From a house above Port d'Andratx you can be at a table in Palma in half an hour and back before midnight. From Deia the same evening is a ninety-minute round trip on the MA-10, and worth doing once rather than nightly.

June and September are the weeks we push guests towards. July and August fill the Tramuntana road with coaches by ten in the morning, and the best coves — Cala Deia, Sa Foradada — are reachable but not restful. In shoulder season the sea is still swimmable, the rates step down, and Sóller's Saturday market is a local market again.

For a first week, take a villa with a pool that holds sun into the evening and a cook two or three days rather than every day. Mallorca rewards eating out: Es Raco d'es Teix above Deia, Ca Na Toneta in Caimari, and the arrossería tables at Portals Vells that never make a list.