Where to Stay in Ibiza

The transfer from Ibiza's airport takes ten or fifteen minutes to Ibiza Town and forty to fifty to Portinatx, and in that time the island changes its mind about what it is for. The south has the big clubs and the long beaches. Sant Antoni, on the west coast, has the Sunset Strip. The north has coves, farmland and not a single club, and the interior has whitewashed farmhouses among orange and lemon groves. So the hotel comes second. The first decision is which of these islands to wake up on, and most of the rest, from the beach to the time dinner ends, follows from it.

We have been twice, both times in July, and stayed at three of the hotels below. Our own view is plain enough. Stay around Ibiza Town, for the old town and its restaurants, or in the north, for the quiet. Avoid Playa d'en Bossa and the middle of Sant Antoni unless the plan is to party hard, which is what both are built for. Inland, the agroturismos, farms that have taken up hotel-keeping, are to our mind the way forward. And whichever end it is, hire a car: Ibiza is short of taxis, and most of these hotels are a drive from the sand.

Ibiza Town

The capital sits round its port on the south-east coast, with Dalt Vila, the fortified old town, climbing behind it in white terraces to the cathedral. Sleeping inside the walls means La Torre del Canónigo, whose 26 rooms are spread across three old buildings joined by a terrace and by the old town's own alleys. One of the three was a Jesuit convent in the sixteenth century, and its chapel is now the swimming pool. There is no step-free access anywhere, so it suits people who like a staircase, and dinner at El Corsario is in a building whose earlier regulars were pirates. The town's bars are five minutes' walk away; the nearest beach is a fifteen-minute drive.

Hotel Xereca, where we stayed, is five minutes inland by car and makes the opposite trade: groves of oranges and lemons instead of alleys, and a nineteenth-century windmill beside the pool that now holds a shower and a treatment room. We had a couples massage inside it. Our room was huge, with a shower in its own back garden, and Ibiza Town's restaurants are close enough to make dinner there the obvious plan. Getting home afterwards is the island's problem rather than the hotel's, and the answer is a car, or a taxi booked before the first drink rather than after the last.

The north

Sant Joan, Portinatx and Sant Miquel are 30 to 45 minutes from Ibiza Town by car, and they hold more of the hotels we would send people to than anywhere else on the island. Barceló Portinatx is the simple one, and the one we stayed at: adults only, stepped up the slope behind Portinatx beach, with the sand twenty metres from the door. Our sea-view room was generic, and in a July heatwave the pool was as warm as a bath, but the cove was good for swimming, and the mojito man mixed his drinks on the sand and made them strong. There is no parking for guests, which on this coast is worth planning round.

Near Sant Miquel, Hacienda Na Xamena opened in 1971 as the island's first five-star, set into a cliff 180 metres above the sea. Several rooms have a round bath at the window, and outside eight hot pools step down the rock, each at its own temperature. The sea is four minutes' drive below, at Port de Sant Miquel, and the pools are waiting at the top for the way back. Six Senses Ibiza, on Xarraca Bay at the island's northern tip, has no sand at all, only stone staircases down into the water. It is the family choice up here, with a kids' club for five- to twelve-year-olds and, beside it, a spa where children are not allowed, so everyone has somewhere to be. On the road to Sant Miquel, Ca Na Xica takes nobody under fifteen, which keeps the water still in what the hotel calls its swimming canal: a long, narrow pool between two rows of cypresses.

The interior

From the middle of the island everything is within half an hour, which makes the interior the most practical address on Ibiza as well as the quietest. It is agroturismo country, and Agroturismo Atzaró has been a hotel since 2004 without giving up the farm: the kitchen picks from the estate's vegetable garden, and the spa's oils come from plants grown on the same 13 hectares. It is pitched at adults, though children are allowed. The pool is 43 metres long and runs between the orange trees, with daybeds in their shade, and the sea is fifteen minutes away by car, at Cala Nova. Xereca, on its own citrus estate outside Ibiza Town, is the same idea with the capital at the end of the drive.

Sant Antoni and the west

The town is a party; the hills behind it are not. Can Vistabella Boutique Resort, in the Benimussa hills, was a campsite and is now fifteen whitewashed bungalows in a planted garden of pines, and in the worst of the July heat we found shade in every corner of it. We went as a couple. With the children we would go back and ask for a bungalow in sight of the pool. The evenings were quieter than we wanted, and Sant Antoni's clubs are ten minutes away to make up the difference. It is also a short drive from Cala Gracioneta, a small cove whose chiringuito cooks fish over open flames, and the one lunch we would fit into any stay on the island.

Above Cala Gracio, a kilometre from the centre of Sant Antoni, Oku Ibiza settles the question of children with two pools: the big one has a DJ and no children, and the family one has bean bags. The sand is five minutes' walk downhill. Paradiso Ibiza Art Hotel, on San Antonio Bay, is mid-century Miami redone in pink, down to a round pink bar on the pool deck, and guests describe a crowd of hen parties. It takes no children at all. A dog under ten kilos is welcome.

When

June and September are still warm, with high summer's crowds thinned out, and August is the island at its fullest and dearest. Several of these hotels close for the winter: Barceló Portinatx opens from May to October, and Xereca from March to October. Can Vistabella never closes, and has fireplaces and underfloor heating for the months when the clubs are shut and the island has itself back.