Ibiza Bike Trip

My bike for the day

I know this post is supposed to be about Ibiza, but I just had to share: Salzburg is gorgeous right now.  Yesterday was cold and rainy but today the sun came out and it stayed in the 70s with clear blue skies until the sun went down.  I'm writing this on my balcony with the last little glow of light in the sky (it's 9:40!) and one of my neighbors is playing opera very very quietly. It's amazing. It's times like these that I never want to leave.

Fleur's come and gone, and I have finished my last week of school and have begun cleaning and packing.  I cannot believe it's gone so fast!  But enough of this nostalgia.  First: Ibiza!

Fleur and I had decided from day one that we needed to see more of the island.  So we rented bikes from this cute little place called Mammoth and took them along the coast.  We biked for what seemed life forever, but it turns out we didn't even make it a quarter of the way around the island.  Ibiza is much bigger than we expected!  Still, though we didn't cover as much distance as expected, we saw some incredible sights.  It wasn't that warm, nor was it very sunny, so it was perfect for a bike ride.  We headed south west down the coast, through tourist ghost-towns, until we reached a gorgeous little cove.  There we stopped for a little while, read and rested, had a cocktail, and found about 20 dead jellyfish washed up on the beach.  Though we did not swim - there were live jellyfish all over the place and it was fairly chilly - I did get my toes wet.  I could hear Mona's voice in my head telling me it was a sin to go to the beach and not get in the water!

After our brief pause, Fleur and I continued down the coast.  Finally, as if the cove wasn't beautiful enough, we came to the dramatic coastline I'd been waiting for.  There we took another break, waded in the water, skipped stones, and I played baseball with a stick and a stone.

When we were doing playing on the beach we decided to head back for dinner.  We took the hilly inland trail which was much faster than retracing our steps along the coast, and the last quarter was completely downhill. Ibiza's landscape is gorgeous and full of almond trees, which we wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise.  Biking was definitely a good decision.

Fleur and her bike

Fleur lost her shoe on the slimy rock

View from the cove

Someone's old abandoned keys hanging on this brightly colored thing by the water

I tried to make Fleur model but she's not terribly good at following instructions.  Granted, the instructions I gave her were: "just be more normal".

My model shot

Cocktails

This picture is in here because the sign says 'Es Stop' which is how the Spanish say stop.

 

The gorgeous water that we found

All of the rocks were sandstone like this

Excited to have found paradise.

She's excited too, you just can't tell

Fleur and I waded in the water to get from one part of the beach to the other

There were some cool rocks

This kid was absolutely adorable

Footprints

My view from the sand

I played in the sand. Photo courtesy of Fleur

Fleur played with the stick

...and then she played in the sand too

And skipped some rocks

 

I played baseball until I snapped the stick in half. Photo courtesy of Fleur

More rocks

Biking back

Reading on the balcony - a perfect end to the day!

The next day Fleur and I took a taxi to the far side of the island to find a gorgeous sandy beach.  Most of Ibiza (or at least the parts that we saw) is made up of little inlets, so my dream of a gorgeous beach wasn't going to come true unless we took some form of transportation to the other side of the island.  So that is exactly what we did, and we stayed all day (protected by my SPF 50 of course) until it started to rain.

Running down to the beach. Photo courtesy of Fleur

Enjoying my book on the beach. See, Papa? It's your copy of Pillars of the Earth. Photo courtesy of Fleur

One of the only long sandy beaches on Ibiza.

Self portrait.  It looks like I have a mohawk. Oh well.

Ibiza, Spain, days one and two

Spain's landscape from the plane. Dorothy, we're not in Austria anymore!

I have managed to catch up to my Spain trip just in time for Fleur's visit!  The Salzburg assistants are having a little reunion this weekend, which is both exciting and terrifying because it means that our time here together is almost up.  It also means that I'm getting closer and closer to Pat's visit, our trip to Rome (I booked the hostel last night!) and flying home to see my family and friends again!  There are so many mixed emotions right now, but I don't have time to enumerate them all (and you probably don't want to hear them all anyway). 

Spain is an entirely different world than Austria.  It is less organized, less wealthy and less beautifully maintained.  One of Fleur's many insightful quotes of the week was: "Spain: everything is just a little bit shit."  It's kind of true.  There could be beautiful beautiful landscape, but then one giant dump in the middle.  Or like the computers in the hotel, which functioned perfectly the majority of the time but then suddenly crashed one day.  It's also obvious that the state is in some financial difficulties - things like the subway tunnels are in a state of disrepair.  And they're numbered wrong.  One of the train stations had the platforms numbered 2,1,3,4.  That doesn't make sense no matter where you're from.  

Fleur picked me up from the airport (and thank goodness - I would have been completely lost otherwise!) and together we headed to our hostel for the night.  The next morning we got up early, had a couple of churros for breakfast and headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Ibiza.  My bag was oversized (ugh.) which meant that Ryanair got to charge me 40 euros to check it. I swear, they're amazing at squeezing every last penny out of you! 

We arrived in Ibiza to a windy day and spectacular views from the airplane window.  The airport is in the south east portion of the island, and our hotel was north west, so we had to take a short taxi ride.  The island is much bigger than I expected!  I had envisioned something more like Santorini, where you could easily hop from place to place, but it takes almost an hour to get from Sant Antonio to Ibiza town on the bus.  Neither one of us had brought our drivers license so we couldn't rent a car (which would have made things a million times easier).  

Fleur and I spent the first evening wandering around Sant Antonio and the sunset strip.  Apparently that part of the island is well known for the best sunsets, so we plopped ourselves down on a sun lounger at a place called Buddah Bar and watched the sun set with a pitcher of sangria - just like the locals were doing.  

The next day we spent sleeping late and lounging by the pool and soaking up the sun for one of our only warm and sunny days.

Fleur enjoying a beer

Sant Antoni's port (I'm not sure, but I think that both Sant Antoni and Sant Antonio are correct)

These kids kept doing flips off of the ledge onto the beach below.  That's what's happening here.

Barefoot + sangria + sunset = heaven

I found it endlessly entertaining that my sunscreen was called 'Pink Bits'.  It was also 50+.  I wasn't taking any chances!!

The pool