The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

The Sunday Times May 29, 2022 5

Travel Balearic islands

Santa Eulalia

Nobu Hotel

Ibiza Bay

Dalt Vila

IBIZA

5 miles

S’Argamassa

Beach

Hard Rock

Hotel Ibiza

THREE MORE

FAMILY-FRIENDLY

HOTELS IN IBIZA

GRAND PALLADIUM PALACE

PLAYA D’EN BOSSA

This all-inclusive behemoth

on Ibiza’s south coast has

two giant pools, a host of

restaurants (try the

Mediterranean Portofino,

with a superb view of the

sea) and spacious rooms

— some with hot tubs.

Highlights for kids include

an adventure-packed pool

and club, and a nightly mini

disco (with a bar for the

adults, mercifully).

All-inclusive doubles

from £359;

palladiumhotelgroup.com

ME IBIZA SANTA EULALIA

There’s a DJ booth by the

pool, sure, but this place

is firmly family-friendly,

with a kids’ club, two

beaches in easy reach and

baby monitors on hand.

Connecting rooms are a

given, and it’s the kind of

place where staff appear

with toys and books at the

moment your offspring is

about to have a tantrum.

B&B family rooms from

£502; melia.com

CAN CURREU SANT CARLES

DE PERALTA

If you really want to escape

the noise, try this rural,

family-run finca in the hills

above Santa Eulalia. Suites

have balcony terraces

with views over the

orchard, and children will

love the stables (and adults

the spa circuit).

B&B family rooms from

£398; cancurreu.com

For more family-friendly

hotels in Ibiza and beyond,

see our dedicated Times

Travel website

thetimes.co.uk/travel

Poolside by day at Nobu

Hotel Ibiza Bay, top, and

by night at Hard Rock

Hotel Ibiza, below. Cathy

and her crew, above

there is yoga, wooden sign-

making and even DJ classes on

the sand run by Ibiza’s own DJ

Angel. I can’t bring myself to

put a chaotic two-year-old

behind the decks, but we do

take a bag and do the beach-

cleaning activity one windy

morning, him cheerfully

plucking cigarette butts from

the sand. When in Ibiza...

While not everybody is

looking forward to this

much-hyped season — most

hospitality staff I speak to have

a slightly apprehensive look in

their eyes when they tell me

how “crazy” July and August

will be — we do manage to find

slivers of calm. After lunch

among the Instagrammers at

the Nikki Beach club, in Santa

Eulalia on the east coast, we

fish for neptune balls and

shells on quiet S’Argamassa

Beach. The Café del Mar

remixes of Human League

carried on the wind behind us,

the clear water in front of us,

the backdrop ruined by a small

person shouting “Fish!” when

a school darts by... this is

postcard-worthy stuff.

We don’t leave the island

without climbing the winding

lanes of Dalt Vila — Ibiza’s

prettified, Unesco-listed old

town — but we find peak Ibiza

on the lurid San Antonio strip

that includes Cafés del Mar and

Mambo. This is Ibiza ground

zero for anybody who has ever

owned a Ministry of Sound

album with a sunset on the

front. You might wince at a

tenner for an Estrella beer,

and the crowd is more

teenager than toddler, but all

feels right in the world when

applause breaks out across the

terraces as the sun drips yolk

into the sea. I even had to wipe

a tear. Ibiza’s had a hard two

years. It deserves a clap.

Cathy Adams was a guest

of Hard Rock Hotel Ibiza

(B&B doubles from £183;

hardrockhotels.com) and Nobu

Hotel Ibiza Bay (room-only

doubles from £339;

nobuhotelibizabay.com). British

Airways Holidays has six nights’

room-only — three at Hard Rock

Hotel Ibiza and three at Nobu

Hotel Ibiza Bay — from £1,929pp

(britishairways.com)

all restaurants to have decks

and a play area.

My prayers seem to have

been answered when we check

into the swaggering Nobu hotel

in Talamanca, further up the

coast, an architect’s dream of

angular white lines, expensive

rattan furniture and a boutique

selling fancy flip-flops. The two

rectangular pools, gauzy

cabanas and the eponymous

restaurant, known for its miso-

rinsed black cod, scream the

opposite of family-friendly

(as a friend messaged: “Who

on Earth takes a toddler to

Nobu?”), but, mind-meltingly,

it’s the precise opposite.

The discreet kids’ club does

a brisk business for families.

Toys are rendered in calming

pastel-coloured wood, and

(KIDS)

I

f you want to know how

busy Ibiza is this season,

sit by the pool at the

Hard Rock Hotel. I’ve

been enjoying my

child-free minute by the pool,

a sparkling Balearic sort with

HARD ROCK tattooed on the

bottom, for, ooh, about 20

seconds when an A320 roars

overhead and causes a

cartoonish plane-shaped

shadow to run over the water.

It’s enough to make me want

to get my binoculars and

anorak out — which of course

I didn’t pack, because we’re in

Ibiza, not Hounslow. All I’ve

got is boho kaftans and

sparkly sandals.

Planes, FlightRadar24 tells

me, are landing with arrivals

from London, Cardiff,

Scotland, Berlin, Switzerland.

They’re here for the first

proper Ibiza season in two

years, and the White Isle is

in big beast mode. The island

feels chocka and, in mid-May,

the season hasn’t even

properly started yet. Solid-gold

names such as Calvin Harris,

David Guetta and Martin

Garrix are on the bill this

summer; most hotels and

clubs have already opened,

a month earlier than normal,

in an attempt to claw back

some much-needed cash. The

clubs Hi Ibiza and Ushuaia had

record-breaking attendance

for their openers at the end

of April (April!). Landing in

Ibiza always feels like

jamming your fingers into a

plug socket; but this year that

socket feels like it has dangling

live wires and has been

sprayed with champagne.

My last Ibiza trip involved

a gentle Airbnb in the pine-

covered hills, a pool as ice-cold

as the cava and days out

razzing around on scooters

with friends. This time I’ve

come back with an 80cm-tall

oligarch to whom I gave birth

the year before last. Helpfully

he doesn’t sleep much, so Ibiza

seemed like the ideal place to

lose shut-eye together;

unhelpfully, Google

doesn’t give much

away when

I search “which

nightclubs

accept

children?”.

The challenge

is thus: could my

husband, son and

I have a good time in this

most adult of Mediterranean

destinations? I packed my

son’s Ibiza Rocks T-shirt and

went to find out.

Our first stop is not Pacha

but Hard Rock Hotel Ibiza,

which has done the impossible

and manages to be adult and

child-friendly. It’s noisy, for

starters. There’s an excellent

kids’ club — Roxity — where I

take great pleasure in dressing

my toddler up like a rock star

with a purple wig, spangly

boots and a blow-up guitar.

Happily for adults there’s

a proper stage for open-air

parties (the season kicked off

on Friday with the retro event

Children of the 80s).

We make do with an

afternoon at Hard Rock’s

Beach Club. Honestly, if you

have children and like drinking

and dancing woozily during

the sunlit hours, beach

clubs are the answer.

Underneath a chic

slatted roof we sip

sauvignon blanc

and nibble sushi

while my toddler

disappears to the

sandpit next to

the DJ. It’s not quite

the open-air Balearic

bangerfest of Ushuaia

next door— to which I escape

one night after bedtime — but,

gazing out at the shimmering

Med across the beach cabanas,

I whisper a little prayer to

Tanit, the goddess of Ibiza in

Carthaginian mythology, for

IBIZA

The White Isle is hosting its first proper party season for two

years. Shame retired raver Cathy Adams now has other priorities

CLUBBING IN

I whisper a little

prayer to Tanit,

the goddess

of Ibiza

CATHY ADAMS