Firetop

So in the early hours of Friday morning it was time to visit Cream at Amnesia in what we hoped would be a much better clubbing experience than the disappointing Gatecrasher @ Eden, and oh how much better it was! Amnesia is a massive nightclub that manages to pull off two large rooms with a great atmosphere, so many people just enjoying their music and not simply ‘on the pull’. It was pretty packed, getting space to dance in the main room to see Ferry Corsten or Paul Van Dyk was a bit tricky; Suzie_Q and I managed to perch ourselves on the corner of a stage beside a Spanish girl sat dealing her wares without so much as a care in the world… quite inconsiderate as she was taking up vital dancing space.

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I’ve made reference to Ray and May’s English Pub in San Antonio Bay quite a few times during our holiday, so they really deserve a post of their own. I would say that this little pub beside the hotel Bellamar was honestly one of the things we enjoyed most in Ibiza. A great place to get a few drinks down you while waiting for the clubbing hour to come. (more…)

On Thursday at around 8am we were rudely awakened by what I thought must have been a fire in a local fireworks factory - about three minutes of the loudest fireworks all going off in quick succession. I poked my head out of the balcony curtains and couldn’t see anything going on in the early morning sunshine so went back to bed. I’ve never heard of fireworks in daylight before, so I assumed it had to be an accident of some kind - perhaps a display going off early during set-up. Later that day I discovered that it was August 24th - the festival of St. Bartholomew, widely celebrated in Ibiza by early morning firecrackers and again later that evening with a huge fireworks display. Nice of the hotel to warn their guests they’d wake up to the sound of explosions! (more…)

The nightlife in Ibiza takes a bit of getting used to, clubbing doesn’t start properly until around 2am and it finishes well after 6am. Due to the shift in the hours we’re keeping I’ve felt a bit jet-lagged all week, and for the most part seem to require twelve hours sleep each day. We shouldn’t really have bothered to get breakfast included in the accommodation package as we’ve only been up early enough for that once - and even on that occasion we went back to sleep again afterwards. On Tuesday evening we went to the Gatecrasher night at Eden nightclub in San Antonio; a very different clubbing experience to El Divino in Ibiza Town… (more…)

After a few drinks on Saturday night in ‘Ray and May’s English Bar‘ (a Liverpool FC shrine beside our hotel), we headed off to Hed Kandi at El Divino by around 2am. We were tiring a bit after the 5am arrival earlier that morning, but as we´d bought tickets online we thought we best make the effort to use them (30 Euros each). Luckily, in the street, we came across a Mexican couple seeking a taxi to El Divino too, split the cost from San Antonio bay to Ibiza Town with them.

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Finally arrived in sunny San Antonio Bay at 5am this morning, two hours later than scheduled, thanks to a two-hour delay in baggage loading at Gatwick airport and a very long taxi queue at Ibiza Airport. We were just grateful that the flight took off at all as many had been cancelled at the North Terminal, most others were delayed by an hour or two. Queuing to get into the departure lounge at Gatwick was as long as the queue getting into JFK arrivals, took about an hour as everybody gets body searched now, and even shoes have to go through the scanner (watch for the increase in veruca transmissions). The plane had its fair share of drunks slapping the backsides of the air stewardesses but that´s to be expected I guess on a flight to Ibiza. (more…)

A few years ago, a colleague of mine had his laptop computer stolen from his suitcase on a flight into the UK via Heathrow airport. Since then I’ve been extra cautious about what I put into suitcases destined for the main baggage hold. I’m not sure I would ever have considered it safe to put expensive electrical equipment into my main luggage anyway, but this example reinforced my usual pessimistic instincts.

In June I spoke to a retired baggage handler who had many tales of what went on behind the baggage carousels at Heathrow airport in the 1970s; theft of passenger items or duty free goods wasn’t at all unusual. So when the government introduced new security rules on hand luggage last week, forcing anything other than wallets and passports to go into the main hold, it looked like a recipe for disaster. It is now reported by the BBC that 10,000 cases have gone missing inside five days.

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So the weekend was a bit of a heavy one with VIP tickets to the annual dance festival ‘Global Gathering’ to be enjoyed on Saturday. Now in its sixth year, ‘Global’ takes place annually just outside of Stratford-on-Avon, at an old airfield near the village of Long Marston. As luck would have it, there are some Pesketts in that neck of the woods, so ‘Suzie_Q’ and I had somewhere local to stay (Bidford), and marvellous hosts my Aunt and Uncle were too; even insisting on picking us up from Global at whatever time of the morning we liked - which turned out to be the slightly earlier 2:30am (it rained). Thank god we didn’t choose to walk. (more…)

The Bosphorus Turkish Restaurant in Cardiff was a strange place, the service was probably the worst I’ve ever experienced in my life, I’m not even sure I’d call it service, it was almost self-catering. I can’t fault the food though, very nice indeed. Presumably it’s the food that draws the punters in, and was responsible for the queue which was twenty strong by the time we were seated at our table. Despite our local guide for the evening having telephoned ahead and booked a table for six, we ended up crowded around a table for four; apparently when they confirmed the booking on the phone for ‘inside the restaurant’ it was a mistake, they meant ’sit outside in the cold’ - which we didn’t want to do. (more…)

Saturday night took us down to Cardiff’s harbour area for drinks in a few seafront bars and a meal at the Bosphorus Turkish Restaurant on the Mermaid Quay. I was very impressed with the harbour area in Cardiff on the walk down. It looks quite continental for somewhere in the UK and in some ways it reminded me of Barcelona with its modern architecture. In the background you have a typically picturesque British harbour which reminded me more of Scarborough. (more…)