A rock with a hole in it sticking out into the sea below Deià, a shack restaurant on the cliff above it that cooks paella over wood, and the best sunset on the island. Reached on foot down from an archduke's estate, or by boat.
Checking the water.
Sunrise 07:42 · sunset 19:40 today at Sa Foradada.
Sa Foradada means the pierced one. A long finger of rock runs out into the sea with a hole through it the size of a house, and above the cove sits a restaurant that is really a hut with a wood fire and tables on the cliff. It has been photographed a million times and it still does something to you when you come round the corner of the path and see it.
You get there on foot from Son Marroig, the estate the Archduke Ludwig Salvator built in the 1870s to look at exactly this view. Forty to fifty minutes down a track through the olives, an hour back up. Or by boat from Port de Sóller, which is how the yachts do it. There is no road.
Honest numbers: 4.3 from 874 reviews. Nobody says the paella is the best they have had. Everybody says the place is. Order the seafood paella for the table, the sangria, and stop expecting fine dining. Then walk down the last steps and swim in the cove under the rock while the fire burns down.
Park at Son Marroig on the Deià to Valldemossa road. Look at the view from the archduke's marble temple first.
Walk down. Forty to fifty minutes, olives, then the sea opens up.
Lunch at the restaurant. Booked. Seafood paella, sangria, the table nearest the edge.
Down to the cove for the swim under the rock. Clear, deep, cold in the shade.
Back up before the light goes, an hour, or stay for the sunset from the rock and climb with a torch. Check what time they close that day; in autumn the kitchen may finish mid-afternoon.
The stony cove with Ca's Patró March on the rocks. Book weeks ahead, or swim and skip it.
The archduke's estate and marble temple. Ten minutes and worth them.
Stone village, Chopin's bad winter, coca de patata. Early morning or evening, not midday.
Robert Graves' village. Dinner after, or the Belmond La Residencia terrace for one expensive drink.
Coming to Deià? Tell us your dates. We write your week around places like Sa Foradada, with the tables and the boat booked if you want them. Free, and a person answers.
Tell us your dates