Ibiza; Friday, 19 February, 2016

Up and out early I headed back down to the harbour area to have a bit more of a wander around, particularly to see if there were any restaurants for the evening as the guide book indicated this may be the place to go, and it clearly is – in summer. In the middle of February the owners were clearly taking the opportunity of the island being almost deserted of tourists to do refurbishments and there were lots of places with cement mixers outside and the sound of drilling coming from inside – clearly they wouldn’t be open for dinner that evening!

I wandered up through the harbourside lanes into the bottom of the Dalt Vila and then back up to the Cathedral to have a look around that before visiting the neighbouring museum that charts the history of the Dalt Vila from it’s original settlement by the Phoenicians through the Punics, Romans and Moors to the modern times.

I had intended on visiting another museum located in the Dalt Vila, but that appeared to be closed for refurbishment so that had pretty much exhausted the list of things to do in the old town.

I had a quick flick through the guidebook and found out about some caves on the north side of the island in a town called Port Sant Miquel which were well worth a visit, and a quick check on the bus timetables indicated there was a bus out there in about 40 minutes’ time with one back around 2 and a half hours later, so I headed down to the bus stop with a slightly ominous sky suggesting the afternoon was about to get wet.

I was right, and a couple of minutes into the bus journey the skies had opened and it was bucketing it down. The bus arrived in Sant Miquel where I then found out that during the winter months they don’t continue on down to the Port for the cave and instead if I wanted to visit I’d need to head the 4Km or so down the road to the port.

It had stopped raining so I headed off down the road for a couple of hundred yards before I found out that it turned into a very steep mountain road, with almost hairpin bends, a 70Kmh speed limit, no pavement and effectively a river running down the middle of it from the earlier rain. After a few more yards I decided it would probably be suicidal to continue on down the road, a decision backed up a few minutes later once I was back on a pavement as a massive lorry came tearing past.

Back up in Sant Miquel I now had two hours to kill before the next bus back, nothing to visit, and the rain had started again. Thankfully there was a restaurant doing lunch just opposite the bus stop so I popped in there and have a very nice, and slightly extended lunch in there heading back to the bus stop in time to get the bus back into Ibiza just as the rain was finally ending.

I popped back to the hotel to freshen up and then headed back out to the Dalt Vila once the sun had gone down to have a look around the floodlit old town.

Back down in the town centre I’d built up a bit of an appetite from all the climbing up into the Dalt Vila so popped into a restaurant I found that was open and had a light dinner before returning to the hotel.