The Hunchback of the Ibiza Villa

It's my last day in rehabilitation (physiotherapy) today. By the end of the afternoon I'll have;
travelled 1200 km by car
travelled 300 km by bike
been humiliated in public 13 times by having my leg thrust behind my neck
been called a girl twice
had enough electricity pumped through my knee to light every bulb in SYP
learned two new words in Spanish
pins and needles = ants
cramp = a BIG pull
and can now eat a banana using my right foot.

What a pity I still have all the charm, demeanour and gait of Charles Laughton ascending to the belfry at Notre Dame when I go upstairs to peg the washing out on the roof!

Palma March 2010

And here, without any or further ado, is my slideshow!

I stayed at Ciudad Jardin, a suburb about 7 ish klicks from the town centre. Not a resort as such, it does have a few hotels, the Urban Sea Hotel Portofino and its sister hotel the Playa Azul.

With fish restaurants and marisquerias cheek by gill, plenty of bars and nightspots and a big long stretch of beach with a promenade and bike lane running its entire length to Palma it's a great holiday spot that doesn't feel like its a resort.

Buses ran every 10 minutes from early 'til late and the fare was only €1.25! Even better, they tell you which stop you're at and have a clock on board. This comes in handy when you had an absolute skinful at Viavi and fall asleep on the bus home. When you wake up you have a rough idea how long you've been out of it for.

As always, Palma itself was full of grown up entertainment. Bars with great music at reasonable levels and no speakers outside disturbing folk not in the bar - a total contrast from Ibiza.

Food was great, plenty of tapas, tons of tempura, noodles, sushi, wine from all over the place and more art and culture than you could shake a paintbrush at.

Here's my tip. Don't ever go to a Palma art gallery on Thursday 25th March. That's the day, they change all the exhibitions over, so there's next to nothing to see.

Light at the end of the Ibiza Tunnel

Every afternoon I drive through the tunnel on the new Ibiza 'motorway' and every afternoon I'm accompanied by a phalanx of dim drivers who haven't got the sense to put their headlights on.

So isn't it ironic that the one time I drive through the tunnel at night when it's actually lighter in than out, everybody has their headlights blazing away.

I'll never understand them.

Twitter ye not Ibiza

Have you ever read a Tweet on Twitter? It's brilliant, Anybody, anywhere can post anything they want, unless they're in China of course. It's absolutely jam-packed with codshit. Here's a gem I saw yesterday about Ibiza. Apparently, the island is Nudist Central Numero Uno. So popular is it with nudists that there are even nudist malls here.

There aren't even any normal malls here, never mind nudist ones!

Anyway, I did read a funny twitter about St. Helens (remember, I used to live there) which went something like this -

St. Helens, that's the place someone giving me directions told me to turn right where Tesco's used to be -

wish I'd thought that one up!

Ibiza Rain Stopped Play

The lack of activity in my blog log (should be a blog twig) is down to my rather uninteresting existence at the moment with hours taken up by physio. If I were a professional footballer writing my autobiography it would go like this

"I get up at eight o'clock and I write some stories and I have lunch and I go to physio and I make a meal and I watch Telly and I go to bed."

Here's the gym I go to for physio.

Thanks to Fiona, our neighbour, I could add "and I go for a bike ride" to that long exciting list of pastimes. She's lent me hers as a trial to see how I go before taking the plunge and buying my own. It's great. I went out on Saturday morning, didn't fall off, remembered how all 18 gears worked, did a 'look no hands' on a bit were nobody could see me, and arrived back knackered.

Today it's raining, so no biking for me.

Ibiza Rain Stopped Paco

Fate rarely steps in to spoil our Ibiza fiestas. The only catastophes I can recall befalling our little San Jose shindigs have been entirely man made. The year that the band arrived but their equipment didn't springs to mind, we all had to stand around drinking for hours until the next plane came in from Barcelona.

Well, what a turn up for the books when it rained last night, not that fine rain that soaks you through, but a good old Ibiza deluge. The evening should have featured Paco Fernandez, Can Raia and The Black Onions but no sooner had Paco taken to the stage when it started spitting.

Forty-five minutes later, he had to leave - safety reasons were quoted, even in Ibiza we don't like seeing people electrocuted on stage - never to return.

Shame. I took a few photos before he went though.

You can see the rain in the last photo. And now, a video.

Ibiza - Palma - Soller

Chalk it up. We're off on holiday when it's sunny! Thanks to the Old Lady who volunteered to look after Marli, Floyd, Spook, Charlie, Mouse, Tillie and Flossie (sounds a lot when you name them all) we're off for a break in May.

First stop Palma, where we've got an apartment just off the Born, where our favourite cafe bar franchise - Cappuccino - is opening another place in March. Three days of shopping, site seeing and generally dressing up for grown up evenings out should ensue. We might do a bit of dining out too - here's one we fancy - Fosh Food.

Here's our pad

and here's a link to the site Owners Direct

Then we're off on the train ( I love trains) to Soller and then to Puerto Soller for a sunshine seaside holiday for a couple of nights where we're staying at the Hotel Aimia

I've got to get my lad's holiday out of the way next week first though!

San Jose, Ibiza: The Big Bottle

If it's March in San Jose, it must be Flower Power! As always, the village was decked out in flower power related decs, the church was illuminated by a Pink Floyd style light-show, there were bars, food and drink stalls everywhere, a live band on in Raco Verd and thousands of people thronged the streets.

So you'd think, would you not, that local teenagers would relish the opportunity to do a bit of cavorting to music in this explosion of life in a normally quiet village. Well, they didn't. Where were they all? At the top of our dark (not enough power for the street lamps) and freezing cold lane having a 'botellon' away from all the action. I know this because of all the bottles, plastic cups, ice bags and vomit I saw this morning left all over our neighbour, Mr. Maffin's front.

A botellon (augmentative suffix) means a big bottle, and is used for the growing problematical situation in Spain of kids hanging around in vast groups, boozing out of supermarket bags, turning into alcohol fuelled vandals, and not tidying up after themselves. There's now a new word in Spanish to describe the place where they all meet, un botellodromo, (a bottledrome) which I've seen used in the Alicante press for the area at the side of the Melia Hotel and Volvo port when hundreds arrive on Friday and Saturday nights to make noise.

Don't you just love kids?