House music plays constantly from the moment you touch down in Ibiza and you must submit yourself to it if you wish to survive. Resistance is futile. It will be playing in the airport cafe from which you grab an espresso after your flight, in the hotel lobby when you check in, in every restaurant you set foot in, and in the grocery store from which you buy sunscreen (do not forget to buy sunscreen). They say you can hear the best house music in the world in Ibiza, and as someone who doesn’t really listen to electronic music I would say in most cases I couldn’t tell you good from bad. The answer is, perhaps, in how easy it is for you to submit to it and, in turn, how easy it is to submit yourself to the island.
I recently visited Ibiza for the first time on a work trip with Bombay Sapphire, after years of assuming it wouldn’t be for me. I am not one for beaches, shoreside restaurants, and lounging by a pool. My travel plans tend to be just that–plans–with more room reserved in the itinerary for exploration and adventure than rest and relaxation. Call it the freelance writer lifestyle warping my ability to slow down. Ibiza was, to me, where female Instagram models went to take photos and where male DJs and crypto bros went to watch Instagram models take photos. Still, I’m always down to have my mind changed.
You will need a hotel by the ocean — we stayed at the Mondrian — because God, you really could spend the entire trip just staring at it. I’ve been to Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, St. Martin, and Big Sur and I’ve just never seen water that shade of blue before. It’s hypnotic. The whole island is. You set up on the beach and stare out at the sea and eventually an hour has passed, house music pulsing behind you absentmindedly as you tap your feet to a rhythm you hardly registered consciously, and you have little to show for it but another Sparkling Lemon cocktail with a heavy pour of Bombay and a slightly deeper tan.
Eventually you get hungry. Maybe you order a plate of fruit or a baguette with jamón and cheese and wander to the pool or back out to the beach and you reapply sunscreen and the scent wafts in the air around you as you take a bite. Maybe you order another cocktail. Maybe you had plans that day to check out Old Town, a historic district full of chintzy tourist shops and restaurants serving tapas and cocktails and Spanish wine. And, maybe, you make it (you should, it’s worth it) — but making it means getting up from your towel or lounge chair, putting on real clothes, and getting into a car. Maybe you’d rather just sit and let the pitter-patter pulsing beat of a house track lull you back into half-sleep.
You must, at some point, get on a boat. Ibiza is an island and you can only appreciate it in full when you see it from a distance, preferably from the rear of a boat. Make friends with someone who owns one or plop down the cash. Just get on a boat and give someone the aux who has a good house music library. Bob up and down on the waves and see if they sync up with the house beat for a moment. Take some pictures but close your eyes and get in the water, the water is so incredible, do not let your outfit or makeup or hair product stop you. The Mediterranean Sea will baptize you anew, and when you come out, you’ll have washed away anything that could have convinced you this wasn’t the place for you.
You’ll make it to a restaurant eventually and there will be Instagram influencers–professional or aspirational–and they will be taking photos and people will be watching them because how could they not but it will hardly detract from the dining experience. You know it isn’t real, none of it’s real, but it’s vacation–nothing about it is supposed to resemble real life to begin with. You order another drink, or maybe two. You’ll strike up a conversation with someone who works at a club and they’ll insist you come check it out that night. Maybe you do. Maybe you get into the sort of fun trouble the island’s entire tourism economy is built on. Maybe upon touching down at the airport you see a few of the legendary British twentysomethings who book a 48-hour trip to Ibiza without packing so much as a carry-on or making a hotel reservation. Maybe when you get to the airport for your flight home you see them again, still decked out in club makeup with a gift shop hoodie pulled over their clothes out of necessity.
The airport air conditioning will hit you like Arctic chill. Shake it off. You’ll notice you’re glowing with tan and a bit of burn on your nose in the restroom. Don’t make eye contact with the club kids; pray you don’t get seated next to one, lest you end up having to inhale their fumes for however long you’re on the plane. Drift off to sleep–being in the sun for days on end is exhausting and you need the rest. Submit yourself to sleep, submit yourself to the beat, rub away at the flicker of glitter on your neck, the one you don’t know the origin of and the one nobody back home will believe you don’t know the origin of. Dream on. You don’t have to return to reality until the plane touches down back home.
FEATURE IMAGE: PHOTO BY ALEX BIERENS DE HAAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR E1 SERIES.
