Ibiza innit

I always thought the opportunity to go to Ibiza had passed us by, we are now well into our 40’s and the fear was always that we would be the sad old people at the back of the clubs reliving their youth while the young cool people were enjoying their actual youth. I was also worried that the island itself just wouldn’t be what we were interested in in terms of a few days away. Turns out I was wrong, on pretty much all counts.

The flight from Dublin was just as mental as I was expecting. As we sat at the departure gate the waiting passengers were a heady blend of hen parties, 40th birthday crews, hippies, a lot of people who I simply didn’t think looked like they would be on their way to Ibiza. This was a metaphor for the whole island. The flight itself was chaos with everyone hyped to be heading to Ibiza for a few days of debauchery.

We were staying in Playa d’en Bossa, not far from the airport in a fairly basic but perfectly functional apartment style room. We settled in and immediately got ready to head out as we had tickets to see David Guetta at Ushuaia that afternoon/evening. We had a few pre drinks in the apartment then started the short walk to Ushuaia stopping along the way for a couple more cocktails to wet the whistle. Ushuaia is a huge outdoor super club surrounded by apartments and hotel rooms that are also part of the same venue. Had a really fun evening watching the warm up DJs and people watching. Our fears that we would be the sad old people there was quickly extinguished – we were not even close to being the oldest people there – the day/evening club bringing out anyone and everyone, which was cool. David Guetta was the star of the show and the place was rammed by the time he came on. I’ve seen a few DJs in my time and this was much more of a full on stage and AV show than I had ever seen. If this place had a roof he would have blown it clean off – it was great fun. The gig finished around 11pm and after a long day of travel and a big day ahead the next day we made our way back via a few more bars and cocktails – first day was a huge success.

The next day was our first chance to get a look around Ibiza itself and we took the local bus to the old town and started exploring. The old town itself is down next to the harbour and is made up of lovely narrow, cobbled streets, vibrant food stalls, awesome restaurants and tiny little bars. We found an awesome little restaurant down one of the streets and parked up early afternoon and had a late lunch, and a few cheeky Roses and Aperols. The food was incredible and we left there with full bellies and started the journey back to our accommodation to get ready for a big night ahead.

The main reason we came to Ibiza was to go to the Kevin & Perry Experience at Amnesia that night. The movie is a classic and the soundtrack was a who’s who of late 90’s trance. Joan has always loved trance and had also always wanted to get to Ibiza, and especially Amnesia, after spending much of her youth in clubs across Northern Ireland so this was a bit of a pilgrimage. We hung out that evening at the apartment and eventually made our way to Amnesia, one of the OG Ibiza super clubs. To say it was a little overwhelming when we arrived was an understatement – I had never seen anything like this place in my life. Two enormous, 2 level rooms packed to the rafters with clubbers reliving their youth for this night and this music. We were amongst our own here and we were loving it. We had an absolutely brilliant night seeing some huge names from the past and after we ran out of steam we eventually made our way home at 7am the next morning.

Our final day was a little more sedate after getting some much needed sleep and we made our way over to the other side of the island where we pitched up at the legendary Café Mambo and supped on a few restorational proseccos and bloody marys. We watched the sun set at Café Mambo and then made our way around the bay to an amazing Greek restaurant called Aragma where we had a Top 3 all time meal. An incredible way to round out our time in Ibiza

We flew out the next morning – Joany headed for Dublin and home to see the girls again, and I hopped on a flight to Barcelona where I had 12 hours or so to kill before my flight back to Doha.Meer informatie