Jack87
Member
I was going to leave it a few days before thinking about writing a review, if I was to write one at all. I've just woken up after a much needed 11 hour sleep, having arrived home at about 1am this morning. My suitcase is still in the hallway and I have no intention of dealing with that yet. Ibiza is still fresh on my mind, and I'm worried that I'll soon forget the little details that really make these reviews a good read. I haven't really written anything meaningful since leaving college in 2004, apart from a CV, and I'm worried that I won't be able to do the holiday any justice with my limited creative writing skills. But sod it, I've enjoyed reading about other member's experiences, so I feel I should have a crack anyway.
A bit of history
This was to be our first Ibiza trip since September 2010, having also been in June 2008 and August 2009. It was just the two of us going this time, and the only two that had made all of the previous trips. It was just us when we drove down as part of a European road trip in 2008, 7 of us in 2009, then 4 of us in 2010. So there was myself - a 25 year old lad, and my best mate, TS (26). Three girls that we went to school/college with were due to fly out for the last three nights of our week and were staying in San An, so we'd agreed to meet up for a night out or two during their stay.
We'd always stayed in San Antonio in previous years. It was fine for our first couple of trips, but as we were getting older and our tastes in music had changed considerably since our early twenties, we decided that it would be a good idea to give it a go in PDB this year. After a bit of research and price comparison, we decided on the Jabeque Apartments at a very reasonable €424 for the week between the two of us. Everything was organised and booked in June, and the agonising countdown to our Ibiza return was on.
The calm before the storm
Fri 21st Sept - The day has finally come, and we're absolutely buzzing. We've got a convenient 6.05pm flight from Bournemouth, only a 30-40 minute drive. I headed to TS's place early, via the travel agent to pick up some Euros. We had a couple of ciders and played some FIFA to kill the time, and talked about our expectations for the week ahead. We left plenty of time to get to the airport as the roads from Southampton to Bournemouth are notoriously ****e on a Friday. No such problems today however, so we had to stand about for an hour before being allowed to check our suitcases in and get through to departures. A couple of overpriced pints of cider and more talk about the week ahead saw us through to the announcement to board our flight.
An on-time and uneventful flight was just what we were hoping for, and what we got. Seatbelt lights out, Raffa FL's podcast from 'I Voice Music Box' on (highly recommended), and we were touching down in Ibiza in no time. One of the many advantages to staying in PDB is the proximity to the airport. We landed at 9.30pm and had checked into the Jabeque apartments within an hour. Our first impressions were that we'd got an absolute bargain. Spacious, sea view on the 3rd floor, working air conditioning and a reasonably equipped kitchenette. We quickly unpacked, showered, and decided to walk down to d'en Bossa. We were too late to bother with Ushuaia for Sasha, and totally unprepared to pay €50 each for a night at Pacha. Bollocks to that, we knew we'd have plenty of opportunities to pay loads of money to do our best sardine impressions later on in the week.
So an easy walk along the front from our Apartment towards PDB, past the Algarb, saw us to the bars and shops in no more than about 15 minutes. The area was new to us. We'd been to PDB before to go to Space a few times but never really explored as we'd always been in taxis or on buses to hit the clubs straight away. We stopped for a couple at Top 21. 2-for-1 on most of the drinks, a lively atmosphere and table service made it a decent place to stop and have a few drinks, which we did. We went downstairs to check out the club part of the place but it was dead so we moved on after finishing our drinks. We (wisely) walked straight past Murphy's next door and decided to head to Bora Bora as we were a fair few drinks down, and in the mood for something lively. A €10 bottle of cider each and we made our way out the back and down to near the DJ. It wasn't busy there, but there were enough people dancing and having a good time to make it worth staying until we got thirsty again after the ciders ran out. We'd decided not to get too smashed or stay out late as the following day was set to be a scorcher and we wanted to be up early, so we called it a night and walked back to the apartment at about 4am. All in all, a very pleasant first night on the island, taking into account that we'd planned to have a quiet one.
Sat 22nd Sept - None of the nights on the island had really caught our eye for Saturday, and the following 5 nights had the potential to be huge, so we decided that we'd get up early and get the bus to San An for the day. We'd heard the day before that today's weather was due to be brilliant, and we weren't disappointed. I took this at about 9am from our balcony:
We sat on the balcony enjoying the sun for a couple of hours, showered, and then set off towards Ibiza town to find the bus stop. In hindsight, we should have got in a cab to Eivissa. It must have been 28 or 29 degrees at 1pm with not a cloud in the sky, and it's a bit of a walk to the bus stop. It's a nice walk around the bay through Figueretas, and we agreed that we'd have to find somewhere nice to eat here a couple of times. The rest of the walk is a pain in the arse though, hiking boots are recommended rather than brand new Vans without socks, which will do your feet plenty of damage. Terrible decision to go with the latter. It's a big climb up and over the hill from the beach into Ibiza town, and we worked up a fair sweat in the heat of the middle of the day. The walk took about 25 minutes in total, and we were relieved to find the air conditioning on the number 3 bus was working well. We arrived at the Bus Station in San An at about 2pm, and walked down the beach to Ibiza Rocks Bar to grab some lunch in the sun. You really can't go wrong with a lump of chicken in a pitta, with coleslaw, wedges and half a lager for under €10. We both added a pint to that order, got a decent seat in the sun, and life is good. Plenty to look at too, the beach was busy due to the weather being so good, and the girls were busy at work trying to get people in for body painting for Zoo Project later that day. One of them was repeatedly painting the palm of her hand with rainbow stripes, and leaving big multicoloured handprints on unsuspecting passers by, which provided some good entertainment.
Both myself and TS are big football fans, I'm a Southampton season ticket holder and he's a Pompey fan so we wanted to find a bar to keep an eye on the football. We decided to take the plunge and head up the West End to find a bar. As expected, it was busy with pissed lads in replica football kits. That's not our thing at all, but we wanted to catch the football so you're not left with much choice. Sat and chatted to some Sunderland fans and watched as Southampton brilliantly came from a goal down to beat Villa 4-1. Oh, and Pompey got stuffed 3-0 by Notts County which TS was less than happy with. We left after the football and walked up to The Boozer to see John and the lads as we used to prefer that bar as a cheap West End option before going out. We sat and drank, and lost track of time as we'd planned to be down at Mambo before sunset. By the time we'd walked down there, via a shop for a bag of Rekorderligs, we'd just missed the sunset which was a shame as I'm sure it was a good one at the end of such a nice day. Despite that, it was going to be a nice place to sit and chill for a while. We sat on the wooden seating at the back of Mambo, drank our cider, chatted to a load of randoms around us, then listened to most of Solumun's set as he was DJing a pre-party at Mambo. Decent set and all in all a pleasant evening, topped off with a woman throwing fire around on the beach which we kept an eye on:
Pretty pissed by now, we walked back up to The Boozer where we met a couple of girls from Durham on their last night and had a few drinks with them. They had a transfer at 7am or something stupid like that so wanted to get back early. I can't remember how or why, but the 4 of us ended up in Plastik till gone 4am. It was cheesy but we had fun anyway, they were good company and we were all smashed. Hope they got to their flight ok, we got a taxi back to the apartment to sleep off the alcohol. We were very much in the mood for some proper nights now, and couldn't wait for the madness of the rest of the holiday.
More soon...
A bit of history
This was to be our first Ibiza trip since September 2010, having also been in June 2008 and August 2009. It was just the two of us going this time, and the only two that had made all of the previous trips. It was just us when we drove down as part of a European road trip in 2008, 7 of us in 2009, then 4 of us in 2010. So there was myself - a 25 year old lad, and my best mate, TS (26). Three girls that we went to school/college with were due to fly out for the last three nights of our week and were staying in San An, so we'd agreed to meet up for a night out or two during their stay.
We'd always stayed in San Antonio in previous years. It was fine for our first couple of trips, but as we were getting older and our tastes in music had changed considerably since our early twenties, we decided that it would be a good idea to give it a go in PDB this year. After a bit of research and price comparison, we decided on the Jabeque Apartments at a very reasonable €424 for the week between the two of us. Everything was organised and booked in June, and the agonising countdown to our Ibiza return was on.
The calm before the storm
Fri 21st Sept - The day has finally come, and we're absolutely buzzing. We've got a convenient 6.05pm flight from Bournemouth, only a 30-40 minute drive. I headed to TS's place early, via the travel agent to pick up some Euros. We had a couple of ciders and played some FIFA to kill the time, and talked about our expectations for the week ahead. We left plenty of time to get to the airport as the roads from Southampton to Bournemouth are notoriously ****e on a Friday. No such problems today however, so we had to stand about for an hour before being allowed to check our suitcases in and get through to departures. A couple of overpriced pints of cider and more talk about the week ahead saw us through to the announcement to board our flight.
An on-time and uneventful flight was just what we were hoping for, and what we got. Seatbelt lights out, Raffa FL's podcast from 'I Voice Music Box' on (highly recommended), and we were touching down in Ibiza in no time. One of the many advantages to staying in PDB is the proximity to the airport. We landed at 9.30pm and had checked into the Jabeque apartments within an hour. Our first impressions were that we'd got an absolute bargain. Spacious, sea view on the 3rd floor, working air conditioning and a reasonably equipped kitchenette. We quickly unpacked, showered, and decided to walk down to d'en Bossa. We were too late to bother with Ushuaia for Sasha, and totally unprepared to pay €50 each for a night at Pacha. Bollocks to that, we knew we'd have plenty of opportunities to pay loads of money to do our best sardine impressions later on in the week.
So an easy walk along the front from our Apartment towards PDB, past the Algarb, saw us to the bars and shops in no more than about 15 minutes. The area was new to us. We'd been to PDB before to go to Space a few times but never really explored as we'd always been in taxis or on buses to hit the clubs straight away. We stopped for a couple at Top 21. 2-for-1 on most of the drinks, a lively atmosphere and table service made it a decent place to stop and have a few drinks, which we did. We went downstairs to check out the club part of the place but it was dead so we moved on after finishing our drinks. We (wisely) walked straight past Murphy's next door and decided to head to Bora Bora as we were a fair few drinks down, and in the mood for something lively. A €10 bottle of cider each and we made our way out the back and down to near the DJ. It wasn't busy there, but there were enough people dancing and having a good time to make it worth staying until we got thirsty again after the ciders ran out. We'd decided not to get too smashed or stay out late as the following day was set to be a scorcher and we wanted to be up early, so we called it a night and walked back to the apartment at about 4am. All in all, a very pleasant first night on the island, taking into account that we'd planned to have a quiet one.
Sat 22nd Sept - None of the nights on the island had really caught our eye for Saturday, and the following 5 nights had the potential to be huge, so we decided that we'd get up early and get the bus to San An for the day. We'd heard the day before that today's weather was due to be brilliant, and we weren't disappointed. I took this at about 9am from our balcony:
We sat on the balcony enjoying the sun for a couple of hours, showered, and then set off towards Ibiza town to find the bus stop. In hindsight, we should have got in a cab to Eivissa. It must have been 28 or 29 degrees at 1pm with not a cloud in the sky, and it's a bit of a walk to the bus stop. It's a nice walk around the bay through Figueretas, and we agreed that we'd have to find somewhere nice to eat here a couple of times. The rest of the walk is a pain in the arse though, hiking boots are recommended rather than brand new Vans without socks, which will do your feet plenty of damage. Terrible decision to go with the latter. It's a big climb up and over the hill from the beach into Ibiza town, and we worked up a fair sweat in the heat of the middle of the day. The walk took about 25 minutes in total, and we were relieved to find the air conditioning on the number 3 bus was working well. We arrived at the Bus Station in San An at about 2pm, and walked down the beach to Ibiza Rocks Bar to grab some lunch in the sun. You really can't go wrong with a lump of chicken in a pitta, with coleslaw, wedges and half a lager for under €10. We both added a pint to that order, got a decent seat in the sun, and life is good. Plenty to look at too, the beach was busy due to the weather being so good, and the girls were busy at work trying to get people in for body painting for Zoo Project later that day. One of them was repeatedly painting the palm of her hand with rainbow stripes, and leaving big multicoloured handprints on unsuspecting passers by, which provided some good entertainment.
Both myself and TS are big football fans, I'm a Southampton season ticket holder and he's a Pompey fan so we wanted to find a bar to keep an eye on the football. We decided to take the plunge and head up the West End to find a bar. As expected, it was busy with pissed lads in replica football kits. That's not our thing at all, but we wanted to catch the football so you're not left with much choice. Sat and chatted to some Sunderland fans and watched as Southampton brilliantly came from a goal down to beat Villa 4-1. Oh, and Pompey got stuffed 3-0 by Notts County which TS was less than happy with. We left after the football and walked up to The Boozer to see John and the lads as we used to prefer that bar as a cheap West End option before going out. We sat and drank, and lost track of time as we'd planned to be down at Mambo before sunset. By the time we'd walked down there, via a shop for a bag of Rekorderligs, we'd just missed the sunset which was a shame as I'm sure it was a good one at the end of such a nice day. Despite that, it was going to be a nice place to sit and chill for a while. We sat on the wooden seating at the back of Mambo, drank our cider, chatted to a load of randoms around us, then listened to most of Solumun's set as he was DJing a pre-party at Mambo. Decent set and all in all a pleasant evening, topped off with a woman throwing fire around on the beach which we kept an eye on:
Pretty pissed by now, we walked back up to The Boozer where we met a couple of girls from Durham on their last night and had a few drinks with them. They had a transfer at 7am or something stupid like that so wanted to get back early. I can't remember how or why, but the 4 of us ended up in Plastik till gone 4am. It was cheesy but we had fun anyway, they were good company and we were all smashed. Hope they got to their flight ok, we got a taxi back to the apartment to sleep off the alcohol. We were very much in the mood for some proper nights now, and couldn't wait for the madness of the rest of the holiday.
More soon...
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