Up early (the sun is just rising which makes for a great photo of the lighthouse at the end of the pier), gym then breakfast in the room to be ready to meet our tour group at 8. It’s odd, we booked this full day tour in Ibiza on our own through the tour company, but someone on Cruise Critic says we are on her bus, and we are to meet before going to the bus. Ok…..
We are the first to arrive and meet Mary Beth, who is lovely and gives us a 9 Euro rebate because she got her tour for free and wants to share the discount with everyone. How sweet. In all the times we’ve done these group tours, no one has ever done that before. And we weren’t even officially with her group!
Most everyone meets in the wine bar, but we are still missing 6 people. We decide to head out to meet our guide, and after some confusion about who is here and who is not, we head to the bus to find 2 people already there. Finally, everyone shows up and we head out into Ibiza with Jose, our guide.
We start in the capital of Ibiza, Evissa and drive through apartments and hotels and lots of billboards advertising DJs and parties and clubs. Party town – no surprise. Jose gives us a brief history of the city, founded by the Phoenicians, conquered by the Romans, taken over by Islam, then finally conquered by the Catalans, becoming part of the Crown of Aragon. Now of course this is an International tourist mecca,, with high dollar property, lots of foreign investment and the jet set (which he pronounces “Yet” set, and I love it every time he says it!) come here to party (as well as the bartender who works in the lounge in DFW who visited here once and said he spent way too much money in one weekend of partying!).
Weaving through roundabouts and slowly making our way uphill, we arrive at the top of the town, the fortress of Dalt Vila, founded 2700 years ago. It’s the oldest city in Spain, and has city walls from the 16th century that surrounds the entire upper city area. We walk up the steep sloped cobblestone lane to enter the fortress proper, with its 5 bastions, each with defensive features like a whole at the top to throw sticks and stones down on your attackers, and if that fails, it is a perfect place from which to pour boiling oil on them. Lovely! Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the fortress is very well preserved (and restored) with wide sweeping views of the main Evissa city and beaches stretching along the coast. Walking through the center of the fortress, we get to the Cathedral which was the first religious building built by Catalans. Originating in the 14th C, it’s been added onto numerous times, and then restored in the 18th C to it’s current form. Because our ship came in so early, the church isn’t open yet, so we take photos of the exterior and wander over to a balustrade for more great photos looking out over the bay and the city.
As we are leaving, a nun appears from the convent and opens the church, so we luck out and get to see the inside. It’s very pretty, with white washed walls and elegant decorations. It’s quite different from the normal gold encrusted, wood lined medieval churches, leaving you with the impression of rich elegance, not over the top ostentation.
Our next stop is Ses Salines, where the salt ponds are located. Here we are going to see a beach, which isn’t quite as interesting to us as is the salt industry history here. Salt used to be the number one producer of revenue here on the island until tourism took over. It was called white gold, and we learn an interesting fact: the word salary comes from “salt” because people used to be paid in salt, and they could use salt as a method of payment for goods and services. The ponds are pretty large and stretch out over a huge amount of territory, They are just beginning to harvest the salt and in some ponds we watch back hoes digging and moving the salt, while in other ponds, just the flamingoes who come to feast on the microorganisms found in the ponds. 50,000 tons of salt is still produced here and we can see two huge mounds waiting for transportation/sale: a white mound used for cooking salt and a grey mound used for road salt in colder climes.
We eschew the beach for the hostel to use the bathroom, and meet up with the group on their way back from the beach viewing. Back on the bus, we head further west to our next stop in Cubells.
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