Can Ibiza still be fun with my baby in tow? | Canada Voices

At Amnesia, one of Ibiza’s largest clubs, the dawn exposes a questionable architectural choice. A glass ceiling appears out of nowhere around 6:30 a.m. and daylight intrudes onto the dance floor. The kinetic strangers who have until then remained pleasantly anonymous are given faces, and not good ones – eyes a little too wild, jaws a little too wobbly. By then, many of them have made questionable choices of their own.

At least that’s how it was almost 20 years ago, the only other time I visited the Balearic island famous for its party scene. I’ve returned under very different circumstances. It’s early April and the clubs won’t open for a few weeks. At 6:30 a.m., the only sound, the only rhythm, is coming from a small, chubby hand smacking the cot beside my bed.

Jet lag used to feel novel. With a baby, it’s an extension of normal life

I’m at the Cala Llenya Resort, in the northeast corner of the island, far from the clubs of Ibiza Town and Sant Antoni, with my partner and seven-month-old son. It is, perhaps, an unusual choice for a first family vacation. After visiting relatives in the U.K., we wanted to go somewhere warm for a few days. Why not Ibiza? A return would, at least, offer a study in contrasts.

The first time I visited the island was an accident. I went to see a friend in Barcelona but the friend forgot I was coming. He worked for a discount airline that was promoting a 24-hour return flight from Madrid to Ibiza: partiers could fly in, spend all night at the clubs, nap on the beach and fly home without paying for accommodation. My friend was running a junket for the inaugural flight, hosting a contest winner and a handful of Spanish journalists for the season’s opening night at Amnesia in May. He added me to the passenger list.

This time we arrive at the end of Easter weekend, which marks the beginning of tourist season. But Easter is early this year, making for a yawning start. Seasonal staff have arrived on the island but haven’t quite mastered the menus and protocols. The highway billboards advertising world-famous DJs are still from last summer.

Ibiza’s population is about 164,000, but more than 4.5 million people flew into its airport last year and almost 1.5 million more arrived by boat. The tourist board doesn’t track the number of families, but it’s making an effort to promote the island as more than just a summer party destination.

There are signs that it’s working. To my surprise, our flight from London is full of parents expertly collapsing Yoyo strollers into overhead compartments. At the Finca Can Musón, an organic farm, children feed hay to goats and donkeys while fathers dressed identically in shorts, runners and socks give chase. At the Cala Llenya Resort, boys in Messi and Haaland shirts score goals on a makeshift pitch that’s overtaken the tennis court. The breakfast buffet is a parade of kids refilling tiny juice glasses and parents queueing for disappointing coffee. From his highchair, our son – the youngest in the hall – receives offerings: baguette, eggs, melon, yogurt. The items land on the floor within minutes (the bread) or seconds (everything else). We drop to retrieve them, earning smiles from parents no longer asked to debase themselves in this particular way.

But there are plenty of ways to debase oneself on this island. I first heard of Ibiza as a teenager, reading Mordecai Richler’s Joshua Then and Now. The protagonist, a sportswriter in his late 40s named Joshua Shapiro, is going through something very middle-aged, longing for the Ibiza he left abruptly, and mysteriously, almost 30 years earlier. He behaved badly there. A return is inevitable. Chapters end with oblique reveries: “Ibiza, Ibiza.”

I behaved reasonably well on my previous trip and not once did I long for the island in the intervening years. Yet my whole idea of Ibiza is entangled with Joshua’s misplaced nostalgia, the allure and impossibility of the return. So, here I am, driving an Audi hatchback with a car seat across the arid, pine-covered landscape, visiting alpaca farms and aquariums.

There’s some overlap in the two trips’ itineraries. After breakfast, my son retires for his first nap around 9 a.m. On my previous visit, after leaving the club around the same time, we were driven to a beach to sleep on cushioned chairs under wide umbrellas.

But aside from blearily attending to nocturnal cries, the contrast is night and day.

The last time, we arrived after dark for a languorous meal in the old town that ended around 1 a.m. before heading to Amnesia. Our only visit to the old town this time is for an afternoon tour over stroller-busting cobblestones that my son magically sleeps through. Dinner for three nights in a row involves a stop at the Spar supermarket in Santa Eulària for bread, tomato, manchego, jamón ibérico and teeny bottles of San Miguel beer, which we consume on our hotel room’s limestone terrace, staring at a row of parked cars, while our son sleeps inside.

The sounds from our family resort’s poolside stage drift over our square of artificial lawn. One night it’s a guy with a guitar playing Bob Marley and Tina Turner covers. Another night the music is more in line with Ibiza’s chillout sunset bars. I wander over and find a man in red suspenders, red shoes and fedora: a magician. Kids are invited onstage and having a great time. Another night the music is especially dire and I can’t understand what’s being said between songs. During a spirited rendition of 99 Luftballons, I go poolside and confirm that, yes, this is German karaoke night. The parents appear to be having a much better time than the kids.

It occurs to me – perhaps at a sunset bar in Sant Antoni, which we vacate two hours before sunset to make it home for a late bedtime; perhaps as I speedwalk to the beach for a rare, rushed swim during my son’s morning nap – that travelling with a baby is kind of foolish. If the pleasure of travel comes primarily from stepping out of routine and adding a degree of difficulty to the sometimes mundane task of living, then travelling with a small child is insane. Life is difficult enough and every parent knows that routine is the best chance at sanity. Breaking it comes with a cost. This is especially evident in a country where dinner is rarely served before 9 p.m., on an island where the party continues long after your baby’s woken up for the final time that night.

But something else occurs to me, sitting with our tiny bottles of San Miguel, recalling our son’s glee when the sea lapped at his toes for the first time, or how he blabbered at maximum volume every time our lovely, patient guide tried to share facts about the island’s salt flats. We’re missing him now that he’s absent, as we always do, reviewing our favourite photos of him from the day. If travelling in your 20s is about collecting experiences and living in the moment, travelling with a baby may be more about memory-making and it may not matter that much where those memories are set.

Ibiza, I may think, wistfully, when my son is five or 11 or 26. “Ibiza, Ibiza.”

Ibiza for kids

Finca Can Musón: At this dusty, fun organic farm near Santa Eulària, kids are given baskets of hay to feed pigs, donkeys and ponies. There’s a small outdoor restaurant that serves eggs, avocado and fresh goat cheese on country bread. (It looked good and we wanted to stay and eat, but we took too long with the peacocks and the Balearic ducks, and all the signs of nap number two were urgently manifesting.)

Es Currals Alpacas Ibiza: Bart Cop, a Belgian former journalist, raises alpacas on this farm near Santa Eulària. His wife, San de Wilde, weaves wool into elegant clothing on a traditional wooden loom. Most of the alpacas are named after musicians: Sinatra, Piaf, Badu. Visits are by appointment, with the occasional yoga session hosted among the gentle animals.

Aquarium Cap Blanc: Located in a cave that used to be a lobster breeding ground, this small (watch your head) and cool aquarium offers a glimpse of Sant Antoni’s pretourist economy. It has eels, stingrays, a scorpion fish, a smooth hound shark and various prehistoric-looking lobsters.

The writer received travel support from Spanish Tourism, which did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.