A perfect Lindblad Expedition day began with a rose-tinted dawn on the limestone cliffs of Menorca. Zodiacs took us to shore early for a visit to the site of a Bronze Age Talayat culture village. The famous T-shaped Taulas may derive from the Minoan cult of the bull, while the nearby rock mounds seemed to have a defensive purpose. We had been prepared for the visit with a lecture on Bronze Age archaeology in Europe.

The drive from the site to the main town of Mahon (where Mayonnaise was invented), was through the recently designated UNESCO biosphere landscape of Menorca, famous for its cheese production. A walking tour of the town was completed before lunch, which was served on deck as we left one of the most spectacular harbors in the Mediterranean and the one featured in the first of the Patrick O'Brien Captain Aubrey historical novels.

An afternoon at sea provided the opportunity for another lecture on bats by our very own William Lopez-Forment in full dracula costume! Not long after his lecture was completed, whales were sighted to the aft of the ship and there followed a spectacular display of breaching by a pair of fin whales, which delighted us all.