Overview of my current trip to Mallorca for the total solar eclipse

Kevin Gagnon Flytrippers cofounder

My girlfriend Caroline and I are on the Spanish island of Mallorca right now for today’s total solar eclipse. We’re almost directly on the center line of the eclipse. We are spending a few days here specifically for this, and then 1 night in Barcelona. It’s only a short trip in between our 2 months in Bulgaria and then our 2 months visiting family back home (after more than a year away). 

It’s the only reason I’d want to be in Southern/Western Europe in peak summer: it’s not every day you can experience a total solar eclipse. While we’re here, we’re meeting up with friends from the Pangea travel app and other friends from Bulgaria. 

I’m sharing this overview with the flights, the hotels, and the rewards logistics that made this short trip work. Flytrippers aims to help you travel for less through our 3 types of content, namely flight deals, travel rewards, and tips/inspiration/news.

Here’s the overview of my current trip to Mallorca for the total solar eclipse.

Reason for my trip to Mallorca

I’m sharing why I’m doing this trip to get straight to the point right at the beginning.

There’s really only one reason to be in Southern/Western Europe in peak summer (which I would normally very much avoid): the solar eclipse on August 12^th, 2026. 

Mallorca is smack in the middle of the path of totality, and we planned this trip about a year ago. 

It will be the first total eclipse I remember seeing for sure, and we’re already thinking about the next one next summer; we just don’t know exactly where we’ll go see it just yet (but Morocco is likely).

Itinerary of my trip to Mallorca

I’m sharing the general itinerary of my trip to give you the outline of the destinations I’ll visit (and you can follow me in my Instagram stories).

Here’s my itinerary on a map.

I flew in from Bulgaria, and I’m headed to Colorado after.

This trip will last for 6 days total.

Here are the destinations I’ll visit during my trip:

• Palma de Mallorca, Spain 🇪🇸 
  • 4 nights 
• Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸 
  • 1 night 

Palma de Mallorca, Spain 🇪🇸

This is my first time on Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of Spain.

We flew on ULCC Ryanair from Sofia to Palma. It was 105 USD in peak summer for the basic fare class with no full-size carry-on bag. 

Instead of just paying the extra 74 USD per person for the bags, I experienced a booking scam (or bug) that meant I paid 87 USD extra per person for nothing. But I’ll keep that story for a separate post.

We rented a car for 150 EUR for the 5 days, because we wanted to be able to move around the island of Mallorca.

Our first 2 nights were at the Alua Linda Mallorca, a Hyatt hotel near the airport. By the way, don’t miss a post about the great World of Hyatt rewards program later this week.

For these dates, that hotel was the “cheap” option at around 200 EUR a night. That is about as expensive for 2 nights as our place in Bansko was for a whole month! 

That’s the kind of thing that makes me keep saying that picking your destination matters a lot if you want to travel for less.

And for that high price, it was a 4-star hotel with basically no working air conditioning (in 39°C Spain) and terrible Wi-Fi. We worked during the day anyway, then did tapas and sangria at night, with a lot more crowds around than in our quiet mountain town of the last 2 months.

Still, paying in cash made more sense than redeeming Hyatt points given the price in points. With points of the more lucrative type, you always need to calculate the value; it varies.

The next 2 nights are at the Lindner Hotel Mallorca Portals Nous, part of the JdV by Hyatt collection brand.

It’s much nicer, and we redeemed 2 Hyatt free night certificates for those, so we’re not paying any cash. The cash price was 700 USD per night on both nights; there is a big eclipse premium for sure.

It’s the same principle as with the amazing Marriott Bonvoy free night certificates that all Canadian travelers should have 2 of every year: you can maximize them when cash prices are very high. The record-high Marriott Bonvoy welcome bonus deals are back until September 22, 2026.

Where we actually watch the total eclipse from is still TBD as I write this. There are heavy movement restrictions on the island, so we’ll see where we can get to, but the weather has been nice and sunny so far, and we have a couple of spots in mind.

Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

Barcelona is just for our positioning flight; we’re not going there to see the city this time (I’ve already been 2 times before). 

We booked Air Europa from Palma to Barcelona for 5,000 Flying Blue miles plus 12.7 USD in taxes (transferable from Amex points), then American Airlines from Barcelona to Chicago to Denver for 19,000 AAdvantage miles plus 47 USD in taxes (transferable from RBC Avion points).

Getting that transatlantic reward flight out of Barcelona was so much cheaper than trying to force something out of Palma directly.

And that’s the best trick in general: pay for a cheap positioning flight to another city that has the seat availability you need (or cheaper prices) instead of paying a lot more just to fly out of a specific airport. 

Especially if you want to fly in luxurious business class. In this case, we’re flying economy class (it’s a daytime flight in that direction anyway).

In Barcelona, we’re staying at the Via Sants Hotel Barcelona, Tapestry Collection by Hilton.

We’ll split the payment across our 4 different US-issued Amex Business Platinum Cards. That card offers a 50 USD credit at Hilton every quarter, so combining the credit from our 4 cards to get 200 USD means that night is almost free too (it costs 185.84 EUR).

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Summary

We came to Mallorca for one reason: the total solar eclipse. That’s happening today, and we still don’t know exactly where we’ll watch it from, but it’ll be a cool experience. After a few days on the island, we’re headed to Barcelona to position for our transatlantic flight.

What would you like to know about my Mallorca trip overview? Tell us in the comments below.

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Featured image: Mallorca, Spain (photo credit: Kevin Gagnon/Flytrippers)