I never woke up this morning, because I never went to sleep. We arrived back from the club at around 6AM. The night before after purchasing tickets from the hotel, I had asked for a receipt, which I think is a reasonable request. In case there are problems, some proof of purchase would be nice I explained. The concierge got all defensive, as if I were accusing him of trying to screw us over. I wasn’t, I just wanted it written down somewhere this is how much we paid (the ticket to the club didn’t have anything numerical on it relating to cost).
The club was big. BIG. It has a few large dance rooms, and many additional smaller rooms, all staffed with their own DJ. Drinks are insanely priced as I discovered accidentally, a Vode-ka Redbull was 20 euros! Water was 7 euros!!! Talk about price gouging…
I heard from a few different sources that the numbers for the night were somewhere around 7,000. I think that is respectable for a club – it was as Shiva had explained full of energy. It’s funny because the music is just this pulsing beat, like a broken record with 8 beats playing over and over and over again. And yet, all the DJ needs to do is start to increase the volume, and the crowd goes wild. I wouldn’t say its music so much as a homogenizing voice. It linked everyone in the room, all of our heads were pounding at the same beat, we could feel our stomachs reverberating in time together. It was a site, and an experience that I am glad that we had.
But, we arrived back, and our hosts thought we should split up walking in. When I was there, he inquired about me, there is a problem he said. I came back that there is no problem, I was not staying, I did not sleep there, I just left a bag there. The front desk guy really needed a reality check. I even alerted them on my way out of a guy who didn’t look so hot sleeping in their hallway, who looked like he might need a hospital. At least I was set up in a room. I didn’t even shower.
Shiva and friends were exhausted, but I was raring to get out. I took off for the bus station, and headed to the airport to correct my ticket. An internal glitch it seems moved my ticket from today until tomorrow, which would be great, except for the two connecting flights I would miss. That would have been really bad. I was able to change one of my flights, cut out a leg of my trip, and work it all out for just a small change fee. Then, I headed to the port for a small island known for the beaches off the coast of Ibiza by three miles or so. I couldn’t find lockers, so I found a grocery store, and paid the guy who was there a few euros to leave two small bags of clothes in the back, then headed to the dock, bought a ticket, and a while later, landed on a small paradise.
The beaches were a lot nicer. But I had to get them. I decided that because of time constraints, I wanted faster transportation (it was a good choice, the island was a bit larger than I anticipated, and my blackberry ran out of batteries about when I was stepping off the boat). I chose a loud and polluting Moped. I felt environmentally awful, but gosh, was it fun!
I drove down the street, bought some lunch items, and lots of water, then went to a nautical store to complete my stupid purchase of the trip. Off I headed to a very long beach. The water was clearer than crystal. I swam about for a while, but there was nothing really to see there. I decided to take off for Caja Solana, which was a little cover on the other shore. This was paradise. It was mostly locals, a few bars up in the cliffs overlooking, and lots of stuff to look at under water. I snorkeled around for a while, and then some people on a yacht starting throwing some bread and things in the water. Fantastic! Swim came from everywhere, and I floated with the little fish as they jostled each other for a meal. Burned crispy at the end of the day, I returned to the port, returned my polluting magical machine that brings smiles, and boarded my boat back. On the way I faded in and out of consciousness, I think the older middle aged woman and I sitting across from each other at the table was bumping heads with me whenever the boat hit a wave. It was waking her up a lot more than it was me.
Back on Ibiza, I got my stuff back (it was all there, which was a pleasant surprise, it was a kind of sketchy situation) and headed to a local restaurant for some dinner. It was 2 for 1 happy hour on drinks, so I had two small Jara’s of sangria, and watched some local kids play some volleyball on the beach. They weren’t bad at all. As I was leaving, I gave them my unopened water that I had purchased in the morning since you can’t bring liquids through security.
Came through security, and everything rather fast. Now just charging my phone back up, and waiting to get on the plane, so I can land in Barcelona and find a nice quiet place to fall asleep for a couple of hours until my morning flight to Venice.
5AM Tuesday:
Ticket booths finally opened, and I could drop my bag and head through security. Wasn’t very exciting, in retrospect, I should have just stayed in this part of the airport, and gotten my bag from the lockers in the morning. Slept on the ground, it was freezing cold, and very hard. Not ideal at all. I woke up shivering, they must really have the air conditioning blasting down there.
Bag check was simple, but security seemed to have only one person doing everything. It was taking forever. Finally I made it through security, and just walked for a bit to get some blood flowing and warm up my legs. There is a line around the corner for bad coffee now and I can’t get on their wi-fi, which is really unfortunate, so posting this will be a bit longer in the making, probably post touching down in Venice. Still need accommodations.
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