Club Reviews: One Weeks Ibiza Diary

Last Updated 15.07.09

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One Weeks Ibiza Diary

Date: Wednesday 1st July - Wednesday 8th July 2009
Location: Ibiza, Spain

Wednesday 1st July: Back again! The plane is buzzing with excitement as we begin to see land below and many eager faces peer from all the windows. If you get the chance to fly in daylight then you get a little bonus tour of the island before you even touchdown. As we step of the plane, it’s a nice dry heat that hits us and not that humid sweaty heat that we had in the UK. There’s also a lovely breeze blowing that always seem to be present in Ibiza.

Excellent, just in time for sunset by Kanya and Sunsea Bar, but I was shocked to see that the once mighty Coastline was closed. Not sure what’s going on there? There is also now a new walkway that takes you right around the seafront from Café Del Mar etc. to the harbour area. Nice little addition.

Where to go on a Wednesday night? We decided on Privilege, as it’s always a privilege to go to Privilege in my opinion, despite many negative comments I hear about it.
Mauro Picotto’s Meganite is ok, nothing special, but we enjoyed it on our 1st night out. Some boshing techno from the Italian superstar followed by more techno from Mark Broom and then Mistress Barbara, who was heading in a minimal direction when we headed for the Disco Bus.

Thursday 2nd July: We soaked up the rays on the beach outside Bar M, where we got a free pass to People From Ibiza for Friday. Hanging around the beaches mid afternoon is profitable if you like freebies and discounts.

What does Thursday night plus Ibiza equal? Cream at Amnesia! Not even an option to go elsewhere. No freebies for this big dog of a night though.

Firstly we stopped off at Es Paradis, just for half an hour due to the free entry policy. I love this club (no, really, I do). It’s lovely. It’s just a pity the nights here aren’t great, or as the Spanish on the bus sang “Es Paradise es una mierda!”.

Amnesia. What a club. It’s by far my favourite place, regaining the top spot from Space. The main room and Terrace are two absolutely majestic and massive rooms. Gareth Wyn is an excellent DJ, and he is warming up for trance stars Alex Morph and the legendary Paul Van Dyk. Wyn plays great warm up music, deep and techy before introducing trancey elements as the room is already rammed.

Ok, the dancers at Amnesia are worth going for alone. They are fantastic, that’s all I’m saying.
The quality if the sound system should not be overlooked either. It is just so good, crisp, clear and incredibly bassy. I read Roger Sanchez commenting on this somewhere for his Terrace residency this year.

Morph then played via his laptop, with a lot of good trance and not too euphoric. A highlight for me was the remix of Coldplay’s The Scientist.
The mighty PVD came on at 4am (I think), and everyone in the club seemed to be in the main room. There was massive anticipation and expectation. This is how clubbing should be. People were hanging from all corners of podiums, and steps, just a sea of hands and smiles.
The German trance master arrives, and there are keyboards, effects units and a laptop ready for him. On the mirror above the booth you can see him playing on the keyboard and then For An Angel is dropped. He plays the riff on the keyboard and also the strings for another tune straight after. This is a performance as much as a DJ set. The first 30-40 minutes were as good as I’ve seen for years. Loops, chopping and changing tunes quickly, remixes, it was all very creative which is the reason people are supposed to use laptops for Djing. He even looped the bass to Billie Jean for a minute or two. Good work!

We never even made it into the Terrace to see Sasha but I doubt it topped the Main Room. One disappointing thing was the lack of the famous green laser and the redundancy of the ice cannon! It fired 3 times early on but it didn’t have the same punch as normal? We got home via the 5am Disco Bus as the nice man decided to wait on us as we legged it over the bridge.

Friday 3rd July: We went on a daytrip to Ibiza Town, climbing all the way round the old Dalt Vila area, where you get a good view of everything. You can even see Privilege, which must be a good 3 miles away. There are a lot of nice bars, restaurants, shops and stalls in this harbour area too.

It was back to our beloved Amnesia tonight for the excellent People From Ibiza/Made In Italy night. Made in Italy take on the Main Room with a Pirate Ship in the middle of the dancefloor! It can only be described as lots of crazy shit going on! There are pirates on stilts, a pirate hanging from the ceiling throwing lollipops out, pole dancers everywhere, paper firing from cannons by the booth and very good tech house music. This room is not that busy which is actually quite a nice experience.

A word of warning, if you take a camera to the clubs, then be careful. There are massive no photography signs but they will let you in with them. However, we saw lots of people taking photos and if a bouncer walks past he grabs your camera!

Next door on the Terrace, People From Ibiza is rammed. They are doing a wacko Jacko tribute night, and we see a huge screen with Jacko doing his thing and there are fire jugglers and all sorts of entertainment going on too. The music isn’t as good though as in the main room.
There is a lesson to be learned here for clubs back home. This is a top quality night. There are no superstar DJs playing but the focus is on entertainment. You feel like you have value for money (we didn’t pay you might say), and the focus is not on the DJ for once, but everywhere else! It’s just good fun and good music, and not regimented like back home.

Once again the glorious Amnesia dancers are shaking it rather well, hanging from the balcony upside down and looking too hot to handle for mere mortals like us.

Saturday 4th July:Another day trip, this time to Salinas beach on the southern most tip (almost) of the island. Salinas is a lovely busy beach lacking in British chavs, and has the fantastic Sa Trinxa beach hut, where you get lovely food and cool tunes, which is a great way to spend your day.
The Hed Kandi girls gave us free CDs and wristbands, someone gave us a Privilege one and then massive Spanish dudes in yellow speedos gave us one for Matinee at Amnesia.
Soooo…..guess where we went? Yes! Amnesia! Another good night. I’d never been to Matinee, which was rammed full of Spanish, and no British beer boys in sight again! There is a feeling that it has a gay element to this night somehow….hmmm.

Feeling proud and privileged to have so many wristbands we hiked up the road to Privilege to a night called The Face of Ibiza. Now, this is a terrifying experience and not recommended. Spaniards flying towards you at 60mph in the dark is not for the feint hearted. Then a dodgy old car pulls up, a drunk looking Spanish driver gets out clutching his beer and cries “Perdoneme amigos, tu sabes donde esta Underground por coche?” (or along those lines). Using my 18 months of language classes I responded swiftly “Sigo todo erecto a la retonda, y toma la primera a la izquierda” In Privilege it was ok, standard tech house stuff really, nothing much to say on it and we didn’t stay too long.

Finally, we headed to San An on the adorable Disco Bus and got into Eden via more wristband action. You can’t help but get wristbands for Eden and Es Paradis, they are falling over themselves to get rid of them! We lasted a world record 4 minutes 23 seconds in there which was 4 minutes too long. Chavved up the max would describe it well, but we were proud of our club hopping experience.

Sunday 5th July: What a glorious day. It’s 36oC and it’s Wimbledon final day too. Come on Rodger! I watched the last set and headed back to the beach.
This was our day of rest. I have to say what follows next put a slightly different spin on the “day of rest”, and should carry a parental warning before reading.

The little Es Calo beach (next to Kanya) is very nice and busy, and has a new decking area too. Families and kids were on the beach, lots of sunbathers oblivious to the world and then the Yorkshire crew (or from around that area) going with the lack of the word “the” in sentences.
Now this was the perfect example of the boozed up Brits abroad. This is the reason the Spanish shop assistants, waitresses, bus drivers, taxi drivers, bouncers and receptionists hate us and are generally moody and cold to us. Even saying “hola” and “gracias” warms them up a bit.
A huge gang, mostly overweight sunburnt, still drunk, loud, obnoxious lads (not that young either), trying to impress some younger and much prettier girls, one who was apparently known as Mel Sykes (not the real one).
So, the lads were becoming cheeky and rude, annoying everyone on the beach. They even stole an 8 yr olds football for a few minutes. Then the gang leader lies on the sand and his mates cover him over in sand so only his head is visible. Next to our shock, bemusement and horror, his, ahem, “little man” appears through the sand to gasps and camera clicks from the decking area. Bare with me, this gets worse. One of the lads who had been smoking, had a small lit fag end left, and decided to place it in his sanded mates “little man”, lit end up of course, so it looked like a little chimney! Need I say anymore?

We only went to Bay Bar tonight for some Sangria and a walk. It’s well worth a visit, gorgeous little place right on the beach.
After a nice chilled out night we headed to the hostal and then I saw something I’ve never seen before in 5 visits to Ibiza. A very bizarre and disturbing, yet funny, chain of events unfolded that I cannot write on here, which was possibly worse than the afternoon beach activities. It involved a guy, a girl, the beach, the police, a crowd, words and finally the fountains.

Monday 6th July: The Aquarium is worth a visit. You have to walk for 20 minutes along the coast or take a boat there but it’s on it’s own and serves food and drink right on the water front. This is what I originally thought Café Del Mar would be like.

Also, a new favourite spot of ours is the Golden Buddha just behind the Es Calo beach joined to the Blau Park hotel. This little place is luxury. What a view, great comfy lounge seat and how good are the Strawberries and cream!

Tee-es-toe! Tee-es-toe! Yup, Monday is time for the biggest DJ on the planet at Privilege. Those who doubt the merits of Privilege should get their ass down there on a Monday night. This was unbelievable with estimated weekly crowds of 8,000. This is more than a club night, this is on another level altogether. Firstly we had to negotiate the tricky hurdle of the free bus, which you needed to get a ticket for! This is unheard of! The Scottish contingent on the bus treated us to choruses of “The wheels on the bus go round and round” plus a few others.

So, as everyone knows, the DJ booth is in the swimming pool and I think Riley and Durrant are the warm up DJs. They had great fun blasting the crowd with hand held ice cannons. The crowd awaits with baited breath as 2am arrives. When will the great man make his way to the booth?
Well….he didn’t! Suddenly there is a lot of focus on the massive stage area, acoustic guitars swirl in the air of the cavernous arena and the massive curtain drops to reveal Tee-es-toe! They tricked us! The crowd roar their approval.
This reminded me of the gig last year at the O2; a spectacular backdrop, amazing lights and a massive crowd. They also had lots of ice cannons.
The dancefloor above the swimming pool is then opened and people pile forward. It’s hard to describe how massive this night is. This is way beyond a guy mixing tunes in a room to a few hundred people. We are on the raised balcony to the left with a perfect view. There are people everywhere, even up trees! This is full on rave style. The music is fantastic, the visuals are unrivalled and Tiesto is the man! Great variety of tunes, lots of tough techy trance numbers, some lovely melodic progressive tunes, some really electro orientated tunes and quite a few rock remixes, such as The Chilli Peppers, David Bowie and Kings of Leon.
The only surprise for me was that nobody ended up in the swimming pool!

Tuesday 7th July: The last full day. More Golden Buddha action then it was off to Space for the Carl Cox opening party. Join Our Revolution they advertised and what a great way to end our holiday. We also got wristbands (yes more wristbands) from the lovely Amnesia girl to see Armin and Roger Sanchez. Talk about spoilt for choice.

I bought my pictures tonight from the surreal influenced spray paint guy who attracts an audience down by the fountain area after sunset, everyone knows the guy I mean. He’s always there. Well, after 5 visits, I finally bought 2 pictures and they are fabulous! This guy is quality.

We took the 2 buses to Playa D’En Bossa and arrived at Space by 11pm. The big man was on the outside terrace playing his funky chunky techno. The room became rammed before midnight, as many took advantage of the cheaper prices if you arrive early, which is a great idea, considering the high prices for other nights. The entertainers on stilts pulled a white sheet over all our heads for a bit which was fun! They have some seriously huge fans in Space that make all the light shades swing about, but it keeps it cool!
I love the way they organise this night, starting early, offering much cheapness, then opening each of the 5 rooms one at a time. It’s almost like 2 club nights.

They opened the main room at 12 and we went in to a spacious cool room where John Digweed was playing. He’d had a haircut so I had to go right up to see if it was him. I loved his set. Very chilled out progressive tunes for an hour as the room filled up, and by 1am it was heaving. He then started playing bigger bassy tunes as the volume levels were cranked up too. As 2am approached it was techno, even minimal at times with some really spacey tunes thrown in too. Everyone was loving this masterclass in how to DJ and build a set.
The big man came back on at 3am ish and We Love Carl Cox not just Space! Great lasers, vertical ice cannons, thumping techno and a friendly cosmopolitan crowd bouncing around. This is a belter of a night and I think Dubfire plays the Terrace next week, which I’d love to see. Pendulum did a DJ set there tonight but we couldn’t be in 2 places at once.
So that was our clubbing over for this holiday.

Wednesday 8th July: It was time to go home, trading the hot glorious sunshine for the manky British weather no doubt. Nothing changes about Ibiza. It’s the same as it ever was. It has the magic still, and something for everyone. I’ve been 5 times in 7 years and I still get the buzz walking into those clubs. People say it’s too expensive. I disagree. Flights and hotels are as cheap as you want, 1 week cost me £250 for both, and we could have had a cheaper hotel. Club entry is expensive but we only paid twice and we went to Amnesia 3 times, Privilege 3 times, Space once, plus Eden and Es Paradis.
Drink prices inside are ridiculous, so don’t buy them, simple eh? Food and drink can be bought in the supermarkets on the back streets in San An for a fraction of the price back home e.g. a 1.5 litre bottle of water costs 25 cents, which is about 20p!
There is a British chav element in San An, but this can be easily avoided (walk around the West End) and they tend not to go out of San An.
On the other hand there are the best clubs and DJs you’ll ever see, plus a beautiful island if you go exploring.

Rating: 10/10 for everything

Review written by: Kevin Boyle

kevin@uk-cl.co.uk