Valldemossa Monastery (Real Cartuja)

The Real Cartuja de Valldemossa is a former Carthusian monastery where Chopin and George Sand spent a miserable winter in 1838-39, and Sand wrote about it so vividly in "A Winter in Mallorca" that people have been visiting ever since. The cells where they stayed are preserved with Chopin's piano (one of his actual Pleyel pianos), Sand's manuscript pages, and the old pharmacy with hand-painted ceramic jars lined up like soldiers on wooden shelves.

You'll smell the musty air of centuries-old stone corridors as you walk through the monks' cells, each one barely larger than a modern bedroom. The audio guide (included) is actually decent and tells you how the locals treated Chopin and Sand terribly, suspicious of the unmarried couple and Chopin's persistent cough. Cell number 2 feels particularly cramped when you realize this is where Chopin composed some of his Preludes while probably freezing his fingers off.

The monastery gardens offer solid views across the valley to the Tramuntana peaks, though honestly, you get better mountain vistas from the road driving up. What's worth your time here is the old pharmacy with its collection of ceramic apothecary jars, each hand-painted with Latin names for remedies that probably killed more people than they cured.

EUR 9.50 entry gets you about an hour of wandering, though you could stretch it to 90 minutes if you read every placard. The town of Valldemossa itself deserves 30 minutes: narrow stone streets lined with honey-colored buildings draped in bougainvillea, and most importantly, coca de patata pastries from Ca'n Molinas (EUR 3). These sweet, fluffy pastries dusted with powdered sugar have been the town's specialty for centuries. Buy two because one won't be enough.