Unlike my ill-fated trip to Jamaica, there were a couple of vacations that I took in college that honestly went spectacularly well. The destination? Ibiza, Spain: Spain’s then-unknown party paradise.
Before It Was Cool
I first heard about Ibiza from a couple of my friends, who had heard from a few of our other friends who had been there recently. Word of mouth was kind of the only way you would have heard about it back then; it was not at all famous like it is now, at least not in the US. It was only a few years afterward that Ibiza was featured on a TV show called Wild on E, and started to be more on people’s radar.
The guys assured us that it was a great vacation spot for anyone who liked nightclubs and partying, so my friends Mike, Dan, and I decided we were willing to give it a shot. We booked some tickets, and flew out that year to spend a couple of weeks there. I didn't know what was in store for us - I had never been to Europe at all, let alone Ibiza.
First Impressions
To make it there, we first had to fly into Barcelona. Like a lot of students, we stayed in a hostel once we got to Barcelona. It was not only my first time in Europe, it was my first time staying at a hostel. And while sometimes you hear bad things about them, we actually had a really cool experience.
Essentially, we all stayed in the same room, lined with bunk beds, with a bunch of other travelers about our age. It was interesting to meet new people, even if only for one day. I do remember that it had a communal bathroom, which was not the most exciting part of our stay, but we really didn't have any choice because we had very little money and that was the most we could afford!
The hostel itself was on a street called Las Ramblas, which is a very famous street in Barcelona, so that was very cool. We spent the evening exploring a little, and trying different foods. That did present a slight issue, because we didn't eat pork, and it seemed like everything was pork-based (and for some reason everything had lots and lots of mayonnaise on it, but I digress).
Still, that wasn't going to ruin our trip. We enjoyed our mini-stay in Barcelona, and the next day, hopped on a ferry to Ibiza.
Roomies!
The ferry ride to the hotel was fun, but when we arrived to check in at our hotel, the fun really began.
While we were waiting at check-in, we noticed two young, very beautiful women sitting on a couch near the front desk, talking in low voices. They were obviously very upset and they had their bags with them.
We tried to listen, because they were actually speaking English. And it soon became clear that they didn't have a room. Something had gone wrong with their reservation or something, so their rooms weren't available, and they were really upset because they had nowhere to stay.
Well, my friend and I had the brilliant idea of introducing ourselves and trying to be helpful - and offering for them to stay in our room. We introduced ourselves, offered to share our room, said we could get some extra cots, and that they could have the beds. (Although obviously we were hoping things might turn out somewhat differently!)
They kind of looked at each other hesitantly, but then they said, “Sure why not?”
One of them was a blonde woman, Dutch, truly beautiful with long, silky hair and a very voluptuous figure. She was all done up with cool, bohemian jewelry. Striking. Her name was Joyce. Her friend, Jenny, was a tall, slender Thai woman who was obviously some sort of model - they were dressed to the nines in very funky, artistic clothing.
So, on our first day in Ibiza, we made friends with them, and they came with us to our room and we all unpacked our stuff.
As it turned out, the two of them had been to Ibiza a bunch of times, and knew all of the best inside information on the scene there. So, by teaming up with them, we basically got the VIP treatment everywhere we went.
A “Shoe” In
Of course, we couldn't have known that this would happen, so before we arrived in Ibiza the guys and I had made a plan to get into clubs. We had heard that it was difficult to get into the nightclubs there, even though they were very big. So what we decided to do was bring Nike sneakers with us.
Apparently, it was very difficult to get Nikes in Europe or in Spain at that time, even though they were very cheap - only about 50 bucks - in the United States.
So we had brought a few pairs with us to give to the guys at the doors as a present, thinking they would be a big, persuasive gift. Now that we had Jenny and Joyce with us, we didn’t need the shoes at all. Still, just in case, we brought a pair along with us on our first night out.
Day and Night(club)
That “night” started with a day-long party on the beach, just hanging out at a place the girls knew about called Las Salinas. It was a very laid-back, chill vibe with a DJ and lots of people, including families. Women were topless, the kids were running around, everyone was kind of drinking and partying in a very casual way, flying small stunt kites in the wind and that kind of thing.
Around eleven at night, we were feeling done with the beach and ready to switch gears and head to a club. The girls said that it was way too early. They seemed sure that our best bet was to wait awhile, and just hang out at a bar or something in the meantime. But my friends and I didn't really get it, and insisted on trying out a club because that's how it was in New York - eleven was a perfectly reasonable time to go out.
But the girls were right, of course. In Ibiza, people didn't even show up to clubs until around one in the morning! Two was when it started really jamming.
The girls humored us anyway, and we all went to a club called Pacha, which was Ibiza’s most famous nightclub. Their twin-cherry logo was on T-shirts everywhere over there. When we got to the door, there was no issue getting in - the girls both knew the VIP guy. As we went inside, we gave him the Nikes, so that he would remember us and hopefully still like us, even if we somehow ran out of luck with the girls!
Upstairs, the Champagne VIP Room awaited us. It was incredible. We went to the DJ booth from there, and it had so many computer screens and so much high-tech sound equipment for the time that it was dazzling - I felt like I was on an alien spaceship.
For me, the music was mesmerizing because it was all house and techno, which was (and still sometimes is) my favorite kind of music. In Ibiza in general, I was surprised to find that all of the DJs were at the forefront of house and techno music, and there weren’t really any clubs playing the hip hop and pop that were popular in the US.
The first DJ to perform was Paul Oakenfold. He had a good following in Europe, but was otherwise basically unknown. We didn’t know who he was at all, but his music was awesome. And since at that time you could even go into the DJ booth, we hung out with him until like six in the morning!
Ride the Bull
Speaking of which, another crazy thing for me was how easy it was to stay out so late. My friends and I didn’t do drugs or anything like that to help with our energy or mood, so under normal circumstances, I would have been completely exhausted by that time, after the long day on the beach and long night in the club. But this was the first time I had been exposed to a different kind of “drug”: Red Bull.
While it’s now available everywhere, back then I don’t think Red Bull was sold in the US at all. And instead of an iconic blue-and-silver can, the Red Bull we had was sold in small, brown, glass bottles - sort of like the ones cough syrup used to come in, with a paper label.
So what you would do is drink the Red Bull by itself, or you could add it to your vodka or whatever. My friends and I didn’t really drink much during the trip, partly to save money. But since we were in the VIP section, we got a couple of free drinks, and I tried some Red Bull. I thought it tasted terrible, but once the energy kicked in, it was pretty incredible! It did a great job of keeping us awake, and like I said, we stayed out until six in the morning with no problem.
Fine Dining
As we left the club, which was very close to our hotel, there was a small shop that had a line outside of it. We joined the line, and when we got inside, it was literally a rented-out store front with one toaster oven and a few different kinds of food you could cook in it, like empanadas and croissants. It was run by an older Argentinian woman who had simply brought those few items, plugged in the toaster oven, and waited for customers to show up.
Since we were starving (especially with the pork and mayonnaise situation), we ended up basically wiping her out of all of her food! All the empanadas she had, all the croissants, and everything else, just voraciously stuffing our faces. For the rest of the 10 day trip, her little store was our go-to destination for meals!
After that first day, our daily routine was the same: go to the beach, have lunch, go party, drink a lot of Red Bull, ravenously eat at about six in the morning, and then crash for a few hours. Each day, we seemed to get to dinner later and later, finally settling into a groove of eating at ten or eleven and then going to clubs afterward.
The girls took us to a bunch of great clubs and events, notably Manumission, which was huge and more like a theme park than a club. That was where we heard something called Ministry of Sound, which was some of the best techno music I have still ever heard! We went to KM5 (Kilometre Cinque), which had all of these outdoor teepees and firepits and things to hang out and drink and party, a very laid-back atmosphere. It was all incredibly, mind-blowingly fun.
What Happens in Ibiza…
Eventually, both me and one of my friends got kind of romantically involved with the girls, since we were hanging out so much. So that was an added bonus to an already-great vacation - it was like they were our vacation girlfriends, if you will.
As for my other friend, well, he was kind of the third wheel. But he was cool with it, and it really wasn’t too awkward. For the most part, we were all just hanging out - some of us were just having some extra fun, which really made the trip unforgettable.
As you can imagine, at 20 years old, I thought that Ibiza was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and the greatest place on earth. It was like a fantasyland, where all we did was party at the best places, listen to the best music, and hang out with gorgeous women drinking Red Bull.
Making Plans
Once the trip was over, we came home to New York and immediately started telling all of our other friends about the crazy time we had. These guys were friends that we had gone to high school with, and still hung out with now that we were in college. Now this was a pre-camera phone, pre-MySpace, pre-Facebook era. So we did it the old-fashioned way of actually getting together and telling them about it in person. We did have a few pictures we had taken while we were there, physical photos that had to be developed and everything. But I guess it was all convincing enough, because our friends immediately jumped on board with our plan: we would all go to Ibiza again next year!
The planning started right then. We decided to do something a bit more creative and interesting than just staying at a hotel. Instead of going to Barcelona and from there to Ibiza, we would go to Mallorca, which is an island near Ibiza. Instead of a hotel, we would rent a sailboat with a captain, who would take us from Mallorca to Ibiza, and then at the end of vacation take us back to Mallorca, where we would get on a plane to go home. During our two weeks in Ibiza, we would actually live on the sailboat instead of at a hotel.
Early Birds
So that was the plan, and it was a pretty good plan. But I wanted to take more than two weeks - I had had such an amazing, fantastic time, and I had so much to look forward to, plus a whole summer with nothing to do. I wanted to stay at least one extra week - the more time I spent in Ibiza, the more fun I could have, right? There was really no end to the fun there, no way to get bored.
Of course, it was kind of a long shot that I would meet another model VIP to become my roommate, and eventually my “vacation girlfriend,” and help to get me into all the clubs. But I could dream!
My friend Marc had the same thought, so he and I teamed up to go a week earlier than the rest of the guys. Somehow, Marc found a hotel that was cheap enough, in the port town. Ibiza has a “main” town and a “port” town, and in the port town, it seemed like things might be more affordable. The place looked great, kind of a loft situation, and we were congratulating ourselves for finding this great deal and getting all of this extra vacation time.
Location, Location, Location
So when we arrived, we brought our luggage and walked up the hill of the town. It’s sort of like going up a mountain in that part of Ibiza. We finally got to our destination and looked around, and everywhere we looked, we saw… rainbow flags?
As it turned out, we were right in the middle of the gay area of the port, which explained the whole affordability thing - most tourists were trying to book in the main town. It was a little ironic as we checked into our hotel room, just two guys on vacation at a hotel topped with a huge rainbow flag! But we didn’t really care. We were just happy to get an awesome room and be in Ibiza!
The room itself was stylish, and there were great restaurants everywhere. Obviously, whoever saw us would have probably assumed that we were a gay couple, but that didn’t matter - we just laughed about it, got ourselves situated, and headed to lunch.
Making Friends
At a restaurant right outside our hotel, we were greeted by the maitre-d, Marvin. Marvin was a seven-foot-tall black man with an amazing physique, super muscular. He wore a short miniskirt and midriff-baring top, along with high platform boots. As it turned out, he worked at all of the great nightclubs there, and as we sat talking with him, he said he could help us get into some of them.
So although it wasn’t quite the same as our once-in-a-lifetime meetup with Jeni and Joyce, this was still fantastic news! We had stumbled across a friend who could help us get into some great venues, and we took him up on his offer. Just like the last time, we spent the whole day at Las Salinas just casually partying, and then headed out to a club, this time with Marvin rather than the girls.
Funnily enough, the club we went to had a doorman that I recognized from New York. His name was Marcelo, a good-looking Italian guy with long hair in a sort of samurai style. Marcelo was a popular doorman in NYC, but for that summer he was working the door of this club in Ibiza, and when he saw us he immediately welcomed us and gave us the VIP treatment. Again, just unbelievable luck.
Carl Cox was playing that night, and once more we strolled into the DJ booth to enjoy the music, which was the best experience. We stayed out until seven in the morning, and decided not to bother going back to the hotel, but instead head straight to the beach.
Around We Go
We had rented a car and had our swimsuits with us, so we drove toward the beach in the early morning, still in a great mood from our night of partying. Now, Ibiza is full of roundabouts, which are called rotundas there, so as we drove along it was this continual process of driving on a straight road for a mile or two, and then merging onto the rotunda, going around until you got to the exit you wanted, and then merging back on the main road until you got to the next rotunda.
It wasn’t always easy knowing which way to go, but if you followed the signs you could get where you were going without too much trouble. Of course, we were doing this without the help of Google Maps or even Mapquest! But we found our way, and were about halfway to the beach when all of a sudden - bang! Someone slammed into our car in the rotunda.
It was only a fender bender, thankfully, but we had to stop and figure out what to do next, which wasn’t easy: we didn’t speak any Spanish, and the guy who hit us didn’t speak English. And no, there was no Google Translate then either!
Eventually, we wrote down his insurance (which we didn’t really understand because again, it was in Spanish) and kept going. Sitting there by the rotunda, calling the police, filing reports, and all of that stuff was really not how we wanted to spend our vacation time, so we let the guy go and just decided to deal with it later, when we returned the car at the airport.
At the beach, there were only a handful of people setting up for the day. It was early, about 8:30 in the morning, so we got a couple of beach chairs, and lay down on them - still in our club clothes - to catch some sleep.
Rinse and Repeat
By eleven or so in the morning, we were woken up by the sound of techno music, children playing, and a general party ambience. It was time to get up, change into our bathing suits, and start all over again. That whole week followed the same pattern, and we got to tour around seeing more hotspots with Marvin as well.
Through it all, there was just this very different atmosphere than the way things were usually done in the United States, at least back then. Everyone was kind of roughing it, being very much in the moment, very loose and casual, with the focus on having an amazing time with cool people, cool music, just a very cool culture. It was somewhat like Burning Man and other music festivals, but totally un-commercial and natural.
Oh, and there was another repeating pattern: fender benders in the roundabouts. We ended up in two more accidents that week, which were thankfully not serious, but lesson learned: late nights, early morning driving, and Ibiza roundabouts do not mix well!
Party Boat
Week two arrived along with our friends on the sailboat from Mallorca. That was when the whole party lifestyle took on an even more crazy dimension. The captain sailed us from one beach to another to another, and at each one, we would get off of the boat, party on the beach, bring people back to the boat, party on the boat, and sometimes take the boat out farther from the coast. As planned, the boat was our sleeping space as well.
Nowadays, I don’t think I would be able to do that (with enjoyment) because the sailboat had no air conditioning. The only way to get any “air conditioning” was to open its small portholes, and hope to catch a bit of a breeze. Additionally, the sailboat was not large enough for a comfortable nights’ sleep, at least for a group our size! There were basically three of us guys to each not-very-big bed, but we made it work. As for showers, we had to take those in public showers whenever we docked. The boat had one small toilet, but that was about it.
At night, we would take a dinghy to shore, but we couldn’t put on our club clothes until we got off of the dinghy and out of the water. So we’d pack our club clothes and a towel in a plastic bag, take the dinghy to shore, climb out of the dinghy, wade through the water to the sand, and then find a place to change for the night. From there, we would take a taxi to the club.
Only at that age would it be fun enough and worth-it enough to make all of that work. We had a lot of patience and were willing to go to great lengths to party as hard as we did, and make it work within our budget.
Strange Encounters
One of the reasons that Ibiza was so enjoyable for us at that time was that, as I mentioned before, it was not at all commercialized. No one really knew about it then the way they do now. So many of the people we met were boho Europeans who were often really cool and interesting.
One encounter that we had was unusual, right from the start. We were at a nightclub, when we noticed this hippie guy with a huge flock of women all around him - and that's no exaggeration. There were at least twenty or so young women just following him around, as his own personal entourage. Naturally, we were curious to find out what his deal was!
He spoke a little bit of English, so we were able to piece together his story, and basically it was this: he was more or less a cult leader and believed that he was an alien, that people are all descendents of aliens, that he could talk to aliens, and so on. And the women with him had come to believe this too. And they would all wander around and live out of this boat that he had. And at a certain time, he said, they would all go into the middle of the ocean to be taken up onto a UFO. I kid you not.
All of which was fascinating and bizarre and entertaining, of course. At one point it got a little scary because he wanted us to come along with them on their boat. And that was a line that none of us wanted to cross - not because we were worried about being abducted by aliens, but because we didn’t want to be abducted by the cult leader guy!
The Big Sleep
For the rest of the two weeks, I didn’t sleep much at all. Every day, every night I was jacked up on Red Bull, and so were my friends. It was wild, fun, free, and in the end, totally exhausting.
The day we were scheduled to leave, my friends decided to head to the beach one more time and then come back to the boat to sail for Mallorca overnight. They urged me to come with them, but something in me just could not do it.
I told them no way - I can’t take it anymore! I took two Tylenol and went to sleep, and it was the longest I have ever slept in my life (well, other than the time I had to recover from my first New Year’s Eve at a NYC nightclub in Middle School).
I slept for almost a full day, and I was still tired afterward. But I look back on it as a great ending to an epic time - an experience I’ll never forget, that I’ll never be able to recreate, and one that I will cherish forever.
