Ibiza

With two days on Ibiza, we would spend the first one leaving it. The ferry from Ibiza Town crosses to Formentera in about half an hour and comes in at La Savina, the port, where we ate at Can Carlitos, at the water's edge. Once across, the plan is a small boat and Formentera's coast seen from the water, at whatever pace the boat and lunch allow.

The second day goes to Playa Salinas, by the salt flats in the south, for an old-school hedonistic day: a long beach, and the beach clubs along that coast to make it longer. Somewhere in the two goes lunch at the chiringuito on Cala Gracioneta, a small cove on the west coast, where the tables look down over the beach and the fish is cooked over open flames. It is the one thing we would fit into any two days on the island.

Most guides settle on June or September, still warm, with high summer's crowds and prices thinned out. We have been twice, both times in July, which is neither. August is the island at its fullest and most expensive, the roads included. The season runs from around Easter to late October; after that the island goes quiet and several hotels close.

We would stay around Ibiza Town, where Dalt Vila climbs from the working port in white terraces to the cathedral, and the way in is over a stone drawbridge. Or at Portinatx in the north, the quietest part of the island, hilly and rural, with small sheltered beaches and not one club. For families, the calmer coast is the east, around Santa Eulària. We would avoid Playa d'en Bossa and the middle of Sant Antoni, around the bars of the Sunset Strip, unless the plan is to party hard, which is what both are built for.

And the rural agroturismos, as we see it, are the way forward: farmhouses across the north and the interior, among orange and lemon groves and dry-stone walls. From the interior everywhere on the island is within half an hour, so the farmhouse among the lemon trees turns out to be the most central bed on Ibiza.