Ibiza - the party island!

J Lo and Pitbull told us to go from London to Ibiza, so we did it. In the UK, they tend to pronounce it Ibitha, and on the island itself it's called Eivissa. Whatever the place is called, it's beautiful! They say there are at least 80 beaches, and it feels true. The beaches in the north are quieter and more family oriented, the south is where the big parties happen. The northeast tip is a 30 minute drive, which is "way out there" and so it's even more rocky and secluded. 

There are so many good beaches that we spent our first night as a family looking at pictures and recommendations to try and decide where to go. We were staying in the north and it was April (70 degrees Fahrenheit), so we narrowed it down to Cala Gracio, Cala Comte, Cala d'Hort and Cala des Jondal. We figured it was cold enough and the kids were young enough that we could just spend an hour at each beach, then move on - it's barely a 15 minute drive between beaches.

Just barely not making the cut for us were Cala Xaracca, Cala des Salines, Portinatx, Sant Vincent, Cala Figueral and Cala de Bossa.

Most of Spain doesn't speak Spanish (and limited English), they speak Catalan, which is similar but different to Spanish.  Cala means beach (or so I think, because I saw playa too). Good morning is Bon dia. 

Cala Gracio was fantastic. We pulled up and found ourselves to be the only ones there. I had heard that Cala Gracioneta was "connected just to the north", so we hiked up the rocks and around the corner, sure enough, another beautiful beach. Picture colourful rocks about 2-3 stories high, forming a semi circle bay of turquoise water. Pop a white stucco house at the top of the rocks and some white sand by the water...

Cala Comte turned out to be the beach that was hanging in a photo on our wall in the hotel. Picture that same beautiful beach, shrink the rocks a little, stretch out the beach to be 250 yards wide, now place a giant green grass land mass out a could hundred yards in the ocean.

Cala d'Hort was my favourite. Change the green grass land mass to a huge tall solid rock and now you're picturing it. That rock is called Es Vedra and rumour has it that Zeus put it there!

Cala des Jondes was disappointing in that "I've been spoiled by amazing beaches" kind of way :) there's an extremely expensive restaurant there but that was about it, don't get me wrong, it's beautiful too.

We found it was still early, so we decided to hit a few more beaches!! :) we drove the 30 or 40 minutes "all the way" to the north and went to Cala Xaracca. That one had even taller rock cliffs and a secret second beach around the corner like Cala Gracio. Xaracca was my favourite hike. We sat and ate ice cream whilst staring at the beautiful beach, then we went to one final beach.

We drove a few minutes over to Portinatx, which actually turned out to be family oriented and one of the most crowded to our surprise. Now, "crowded" means 15-20 people as opposed to 0-5 that we found at every other beach lol. Really nice forest (along the beach) hike at Portinatx.

We went back to the hotel and found this was our second hotel with a temperpedic mattress - nice! 

We walked the town learning that Ibiza is basically in off season until 31 May, so it was very quiet. We took the food recommendation of the hotel and enjoyed some local cuisine. Such bright colours all over Spain!

In Spain, they drive on the left hand side of the road, sit on the left hand side of the car, and go to the left around roundabouts. Speed limits are posted in kmph. We changed our car navigation from Catalan to English and unbeknownst to us, the digital speedometer changed to mph. I mentioned to my wife that I liked how fast we could drive, but then we realized that we were zipping past every other car - pretty funny to realise that mph is way faster than kmph when you're looking at kmph signs :)