FAMILY | IBIZA
he last time I set foot on Ibiza, I arrived with £200 in my pocket, an appetite for adventure and a rucksack full of hot pants. It turned out to be all I needed to see me through the summer of 1997, when Ibiza – Nirvana for my 19-year-old self – was a fantastical haze of clubs, cocktails and college friends. I worked through my hangovers in a plastic Irish bar by day and chased cult DJs around the superclubs by night. It was epic. Fast-forward 17 years, and I return to my former stomping ground with the husband and a toddler in tow, and a mountain of luggage stuffed with baby paraphernalia. While signing up for our rental car, our curious 18-monthold son, Charlie, managed to wander into Cathy and David Guetta’s club lounge at the redeveloped airport. With its chrome fit-out, cool tunes and champagne-sipping clientele,
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it was the first red flag that Ibiza was not the dropout outpost I left back in the 1990s. As we drove up the dust path to the eerily quiet Can Planells (Sant Miquel de Balansat, +34 9714 334 924; canplanells.com), the agroturismo we had booked for our first two nights, my sister’s words rang in my head. “You’re staying on a farm! In Ibiza! That’s miles away from a beach or a club? You need your head seen to!” We had wanted to stay somewhere tame but tasteful, somewhere that tolerated toddlers,
Calm waters – Cala Xarraca Beach, above, off-duty mum Liz, left, and below, the upmarket agr agroturisme estate of Can Planells.
around the main towns and The Ibiza Tourist Board has ten offices scattered than willing to let you villages, manned by super helpful staff who are more tracks, tapas bars and local in on the lesser-known cultural hotspots, walking ibiza.travel/en markets, so be sure to tap this fantastic resource.