Ibiza: What Should I Do?

sorry, i have no real advice for you having never been - i suggest you avoid all the obvious tourist traps like San Antonio centre and maybe try to find some good free parties up near the mountains (going by word of mouth maybe)?

If you like, avoid the clubs and hang out in the Bar Mambo etc, watch the sun go down, sit in the open air, drink, dance with / chat to girls, whatever, in the bars by the sea edge. You don't have to pay to get in and it's a nice, chilled evening.

Ibiza? I love this place. What is your experience?

i love it so much both times i've been i've considered missing my flight home. in fact on my last trip i actually did.

clubs:
pacha - strange experience, wide mix of people, lots of older dressed up ppl dancing amazingly. very ibiza. ibiza town is nice too.
space - went for the closing last year and spent like 10 hours in the terrace and saw lots of great djs. my favourite club. dancers came out on stilts handing out sparklers ffs.
dc10 - went for the closing last year and it was pretty shit tbh (too many ppl). next time i went was a lot of fun. real sleazy, international feel. try and see shonky he's amazing.
ushuaia - total trash palace in the best possible way. luciano has a residency there, his set was a lot of fun when i went. after it finished at 12am we went to the delano round the corner and sat on the beach talking with some girls until the sun came up.

beaches:
benirras - beautiful spot in the north to watch the sunset and smoke weed with hippies
las salinas - tiny little beach with the BEST fish restaurant. make sure you go here seriously. you have to book.

my only other restaurant tip would be 'la paloma' near san miguel. go for breakfast in the garden. or go for dinner and try the steak.

take money

*12am = midnight.

also the beach i said was 'las salinas' is actually somewhere totally different. i meant this place: http://www.estorrent.net/

haha found this vid of luciano's set at ushuaia. he played this track ~twice~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqspvzqgwLc

<3<3

i might book another trip this summer

anyone who's been to ibiza still posting here?

am planning a trip for this coming september. interested in bars where i can hear balearic music and watch the sun going down - do they actually exist in a way that's not awful, over-crowded and £30 for a cocktail?

i'll probably go clubbing too. if i must.

I went last September but I am maybe not the best person to answer this because a) clubs/dance not really my scene and b) I was hauled along by my fiancee tbh, who wanted the haute-bohemia semi-hippy euroglamour end of things. But I quite enjoyed Sunset Ashram on Cala Conta, and of the places we went it's nearest to your reqs – music about right; not awful, and on a nice beach; cocktails were roughly ibiza-normal iirc (food was expensive and only ok); not mad-crowded but, yeah, w/o reservations hard to get an unjostled spot facing west at sunset. Great view though.

Where would you be staying? Ibiza town?

Did you have a good time?

I barely ever go clubbing anymore but I guess given my love for dance music I prob will do a bit of it.

We're not sure about where to stay yet, we kind of want to get a villa somewhere away from things, but we're wondering if the price of taxis etc will make that a lot more expensive than it initially seems.

Broadly yes. It's shadowed by some personal hang-ups(*), but I was looking back on it warmly just the other morning: we were in Ibiza Town, and it was sunny and relaxed, and we had nice days and nights – walking around and drinking on terraces in Old Town, cycling round Formentera, awkward middle-aged person attempts to score, beach bars… it was slightly ridiculous but good fun. We didn't really have to deal much with mad-for-it 20something crowds; we went to one club but agreed that this world was not meant for us, that's fine, let's never speak of it again.

It was more expensive than I'd thought, but that was the drink as much as anything (ok, and losing my phone); I think if you want to sit somewhere nice and drink, it won't be that cheap (boozing in our room didn't feel right when we could be out and seeing the world). We used airbnb, which saved us some, but then again we accidentally picked a flat above a gay bar that played thumping house till 3 in the morning. That wasn't ideal, but tbf we were usually out till the bangers stopped.

* I wasn't comfortable with how much it would cost (& I'm freelance, so it was dropping a week of work), especially given Ibiza has no place in my imagination's map of fun. Also I felt like a fucking idiot telling people that I, a 40-year-old man who wants to be left alone with his books & dislikes heat and beaches, was going to Ibiza for the first time. It's a comically ill-fitting destination for me. And I arrived with a shit cold.

Oh, and we'd thought about trying to get somewhere a bit further out, but ultimately, yeah, we didn't want to be stressing about taxis. fwiw in a villa I suspect you'd save more on booze than you lost on taxis - easier to stick to supermarket drink, much less temptation to walk around, enjoy a glass of wine on a terrace somewhere.

Ibiza : It's expensive, you will have to get used to it. Having said that, there are options..

San Antonio is not as bad now as its reputation would have it: The major caners have moved onto cheaper islands. It's still there, but not as much.

Are all of the islands equally expensive?

No.

ok, here is a good tip:

Cafe del mar on the tip of the San Antonio bay is the place for sensational views of sunsets (huge crowds) and pricey cocktails, but just before there on the path from the town is an ice-cream vendor shop that also does cocktails and drinks, not as huge or fancy but also not as expensive , and its the same sunset obviously.

my peeps tell me that one side of the island is classic crazy ibiza and the other side is chilled

i was gonna go this year but circumstances beyond my control have quashed those plans :(

I'm happy to be visiting again next week. Reading 'Shadows Across The Moon: Outlaws, Freaks, Shamans And The Making Of Ibiza Clubland' in preparation. Only two chapters in but it's a good read so far.

i ended up going! i sort of hated it, but i wasn't really in the right part

such a beautiful island, even if parts of it are its own special hell.

My last visit was v brief and out of season in 2015. By hellish parts are we thinking playa d'en bossa, san antoni etc?

yeah san antonio mainly is hell. playa den b is sleazy but not anything close to san antonio. ibiza town is really nice and has great spanish restaurants. obv the north and stuff is nice too. i did go raving a lot when i was there, one thing i would say is the ecstasy there is the best shit i've ever done in my life.

i meant san antonio is the main hellmouth, rather than to imply some parts of san antonio are nice.

Thanks. It sounds as though little has changed since my first visit 20 years ago. I'm probably less tolerant that I was then though! I had imagined that the Ibiza uncovered types and boozy lads would have moved on by now but maybe not. Somewhat apprehensive about visiting the bigger clubs, probably because I'll only get one or two shots at a night out..

i saw dj harvey in pikes when i was there, he's doing a residency on mondays in august/september again this year. i dunno what the lineups or crowd are like there in july but when i went it was free in, normal priced drinks, good music and nice people, the only place i found that really. didn't enjoy any of the other clubs too much - we partied a lot but much of it was in our apartment on the balcony, or on the beach just outside.

it does require a trip to san antonio but cafe mambo had decent balearic music when i visited - the food is terrible and overpriced but could be good for an evening watching the sunset, tho i dunno how it works out from dj to dj.