Usually we see them from the sands of the Kumharas, a very peaceful sunset bar, but also we can see it from the hotel (if the balcony orientation allows it) of from any point of the west coast of the island.

There are many bars and clubs in many beaches which organize parties every day at that time (and they could take until sunrise).

In this post I wanted to show you a Timelapse that compiles some of the sunsets of our last trip to Ibiza. It takes less than 2 minutes and some of the sequences are very beautiful:

Our premises to find beaches where spend a good while are good access between the car and the sand, easy to step in and out to the water and, no matter how many people are there, be calm and quiet. We need to be able to find our little place where to be more or less quiet and enjoy the sun and the sea.

This premises helped us to discard many beaches only looking at them: beaches with hundreds of sunbeds, pedaling artifacts, stones or rocks, … forced us to follow our search.

Cala Tarida

Cala Tarida is one of the most famous and known beaches of Ibiza, it is big and it has a lot of commodities and services. It is surrounded by a macro-urbanization full of apartments. A couple of beach-clubs are playing music all over the day.

It is very easy to arrive, following the indication on the road from San Antonio or Sant Josep (it is difficult to become lost). It has hotels, apartments, bars, clubs, sports area, shops, pharmacies …

It is perfect for those who love water activities and the continuous movement of people (lots of people). And, of course, it is not what we was looking for, so we followed our tour searching for “the perfect cove”.

Cala es Molí

Cala es Molí is the next cove along the island towards the south coast. We enjoyed it very much. The access with the car is across a non paved road but very easy.

It is a little cove in a very closed bay, it has pine trees until the same sand of the beach, rounded by cliffs and with some rocks. It has very little and quiet people. In the left wall, there is a little cave into the sea where you can swim or dive.

There is a restaurant and public bathrooms, also.

We spent some hours there, swimming, diving and taking sun baths in a corner at the right. We were very close to one of the docks I mentioned in the last post.

Cala Vedella

Cala Vedella was our third beach of the day (and the last). It is very similar to the first one: very built and with a lot of services but we had not time to look for other places, we parked the car near the sand and we took a quick bath.

The non paved road crosses in front of some restaurants and shops that are in front of the beach. It does not seem very nice to take a lunch there, with the dust of the cars at two meters from the tables.

It was late in the afternoon and there was not many people in that beach, but I suppose that will be completely different at noon.

There are 3 types of roads in Ibiza: state roads, county roads and some non paved roads. The access to the majority of the most beautiful coves that we found is by a non paved road but only the last meters and they are in very good status. Our rented car (not a SUV nor a 4×4) arrived to all of the coves without problems.

Cala de San Vicente or Sant Vicent – Sant Vicente Cove

Called “Cove”, San Vicente is a big beach with all the commodities in the north-east of the island. It is very urbanized, full of sunbeds, umbrellas, beach bars, restaurants and apartment buildings. The access to the beach is paved until the sand and there are public parking and handicapped reserved sites on it.

In this beach we started to see the typical docks of the Balearic Islands: over the sea level, with a ramp and a engine to elevate the boat and slide it over the rocks (later you will see a photo that shows them).

There was a lot of people on the beach, but without stress and we found enough space to put our towels on the sand without fight with the neighbors (in June it is possible).

The picture shows a panorama of part of this beach and Punta Grossa:

After spend a good while in that beach (with tones of sun protection) we decided to go to Punta Grossa to have a better view of the landscapes of that part of the island.

Punta Grossa

The road to access Punta Grossa departs from the roundabout in the exit from Cala San Vicente to the north. After a couple of kilometers we arrived to a barrier and it is not allowed to cross it without a special permission because it is the access to the lighthouse and its dependencies, but we could park the car and walk for a while.

After 100 meters walk we reach a cliff that looks over Cala San Vicente and a pile of rocks on the sea that dot the skyline.

Cala d’en Serra

We came back to the car and we follow the road towards Portinatx looking for a new cove where take a bath and spend another while. We tried Cala d’en Serra, but after drive for some minuts over a non paved road we saw that the parking was far away from the beach and we decided to go to the next one.

The truth was that this beach looks very well from the road, we a promise of transparent waters and a quite place:

Cala Xarraca

We went into Portinatx but we skipped it since it was almost like Cala San Vicente and we wanted something smaller and quieter. We arrived to Cala Xarraca, which had parking in the middle of a reed very close to the sand.

Cala Xarraca is smaller than the previous one and it is rounded by a cliff in one side and an apartments zone in the other. It also have its own restaurant, and a islet in the middel of the bay.

The next picture shows an example of the tipycal docks of the Balearic Islands guarding the boats from the rocks and the sea effects:

After spent a couple oh ours in this cove we came back to the hotel to get our supper with enough time to move to Kumharas to see the sunset (we will write about this place in the next posts).

San Antonio de Portmany es one of those villages focused completely to the tourism, I would say that the foreign tourism overall and this hotel reflects this fact.

Although the hotel was “refurbished” a few years ago and a new section was built, the rooms remains a little bit “old fashioned” and they are just to spend some days near the beach without many commodities. Air conditioned and TV. Safety box and hairdryer to rent. All of them have a balcony with a little table and chairs, some of them overlooking the sea and none of them have “mini-bar” or fridge.

We were hosted in half board and both meals, breakfast and supper were very repetitive. The quantity of foss is enough but variety is something to improve by their side. They offer the possibility of change the supper by a picnic for dinner and it consists on 2 little sandwiches and 3 pieces of fruit without drink for the half board customers.

The hotel has three swimming, gym, games room, sauna, jacuzzi (under payment), some bars, internet corner … and the staff is very friendly.

Its location is very good, 20 minutes from Ibiza city, 100 meters from a beach and in the middle of the east coast of the island. Very close to the famous “Cafe del Mar” but also close to other sunset bars like “Kumharas” or “Villa Mercedes”

In conclusion, this is a normal hotel (to be a 3 star one) where it is not worth to spend more that the right time to sleep, take a breakfast and supper. I mean to use it only like a base camp to move around the island

You can visit the Azuline Hotels to know more about the hotel.

Info about the hotel:

C/ Albacete 5-7
07839 San Agustín (San José)
Tel: 971.34.09.50

They are photos without a singular theme: sunsets, landscapes, skies, animals, flowers, monuments, temples, cities …

One of the purposes of this Photoblog is to improve my skills on  “digital photographic technique” both with the camera like with Photoshop. But, why to use a photoblog if there are places like Flickr or Picasa?

Because I like “my way” of doing things. I like to control how the photos appears, how to expand them, I want to know how visitors arrive, where are they, the links around the photo… everything. Also, I would like to learn how search engines indexed and positioned images that has no text (only “title” and “alt” tags) and learn about plugins that improve the usability, layout … of a photoblog.

In this moment there are about 30 photos pushed. Here you have a sample of them:

This photoblog is powered by WordPress with a theme original from bueltge and some features from other themes (like the EXIF data table). I’m using two specific plugins: Expand Images to zoom the photos and WP-CopyRightPro as a first level of protection against copies.

All the photos (with a few exceptions) can be bought using Fotomoto site, printed over different kind of papers and sizes or downloaded and with different license types depending on the buyer purposes.

And that’s all, I invite you to visit and enjoy my photoblog and please, cosider to comment some of them.

We discovered it by chance some weekends ago, the truth is that the restaurant pleasantly surprised us both value for money, as the price itself.

They have menu (including weekends) and it has a fixed price of 12 € + VAT including two courses, dessert and drinks. The cuisine is a mixture of Italian and traditional. You can find pasta, risottos, fideuá … everything very Mediterranean. The restaurant is a rustic style highlighting the stone walls and white furniture, contrasting with the bricks of the walls.

It has two floors, the entry floor overlooking the street level and a basement, the toilets are on the street floor, which together with the fact that there are no doorsteps make the place a local adapted for disabled guests.

Interesting data:

• Plaça Comercial, 11 (continuation of Comerç Street in front of the Mercat del Born)
• Metro: Sant Jaume L4
• Openning Hours: For the lunch from Monday to Friday from 13:00 to 16:00 hs. For the dinner from Monday to Thursday from 20:30 to 23:00 hs. And an uninterrupted schedule Saturday and Sunday until 24:00 pm.

The reason is that while most sites use the symbols or classical texts, there are some others who call for my attention, because of the design, the work or the occurrences of the “designers” or owners.

I have not a database made of photos, so this section will grow as I collect them.

And I start with the icons of the Diversus Restaurant toilets in the Born district of Barcelona, about wich I wrote the other day:

These are the signs which guide the customer to the correct place in that restaurant:

Ildefonso Cerdà designed a structured city, embodied in the structure of the Eixample district in Barcelona, 150 years ago. Now we are invited to participate and to be present through our personal messages at Barcelona from within 150 years, Barcelona 2159.

These weeks we are going to write or create (who wish it) a message and our messages will be encapsulated. Within 150 years, “someone” will open the capsule and will find our thoughts on a world that we can hardly imagine, but we will try it.

We can leave our messages as we prefer: text, image or video. I’ve already done mine and you can see what I’ve left for the future following this link (spanish and catalan):

http://www.barcelona2159.org/index.php?id=2439

The translation would be something like:

What will be the streets of Barcelona in 150 years?
Streets clean and tidy, with no congestion nor noise, with sufficient moral climate to avoid having to fill them with warnings: do not litter, do not block, do not park here, do not run and do not bother others …
Streets perfectly adapted to the needs of all, no bumps or obstacles, with toilets, seats and where prevails nature and services for the citizens.

The text is limited to 800 characters so for me the hardest exercise has been synthesis. There is a lot of themes to choose for creating the message, but the organization of this activity facilitated a little bit this task by proposing us to focus on any of the 45 tracks that define the city.

Do you want to be in the future? Wait no more and join this proposal, leave your message and the people on the future will know what you expect in Barcelona2159.org

These jokes are short, question and answer, based on word games or in occurrences. Some of them lose all their sense when translating into Spanish.

I’m going to start a compilation of this jokes, perhaps in 3 or 4 years I could edit the book of the image.

Here is the first list:

• ¿Did you hear about the two silkworms that had a race? It ended up in a tie.
• How many Microsoft employees does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. We’ll just declare darkness the new standard.
• What farm animal is a cannibal? A Cow, it eats it’s fodder!
• What do you call a rabbit with fleas? Bugs Bunny.
• What do you call a day that follows two days of rain? Monday.
• Why are Bankers good bike riders?? They are good at keeping their balance!
• Why don’t fish play tennis? They might get caught in the net.

Do you have some spam like the examples? Will you help me to expand the list? If you found in your spam any of these jokes, add it in the comments of this post along with the URL of your blog. If I consider it funny and appropriate, I will add to the previous list with the link for the “contributor”.

Note: I reserve the right to publish or not any joke and / or link to any kind of blog for reasons we can all imagine …

Thanks

Google does this, as usual, in the form of custom logos with the different characters. From 6 days ago they are showing us those logos and I don’t know for how many more they will, but it lacks some essential characters, don’t you think?

I stored those logos and in this post I show you the collection (if Google adds any more I will add it here).

Also, I found a directory of Google where they have collected some of the logos that have used during the time, sorted by months and years. You can access through: Google Logos.