Things to Do in Ibiza: Build a Trip Around the Island

There is a version of Ibiza in which the day is something to survive before the night starts. This guide is for the other one, which is much larger: an island with a UNESCO fortress, a salt-flat nature reserve full of flamingos, 210 kilometres of coast best seen from a kayak, and two markets that have been running since the counter-culture arrived in the sixties.

Dalt Vila and Ibiza Town

Dalt Vila is the single best thing to do on Ibiza and it is free. The upper town has been continuously fortified since the Phoenicians, and the walls you climb today are 16th-century Italian military engineering — a complete Renaissance bastion system, one of very few left in the Mediterranean, and the reason the whole ensemble was listed by UNESCO in 1999.

Enter by the Portal de ses Taules, the main drawbridge gate, and climb. The route runs up past the Plaça de Vila's restaurants and galleries, through the Baluard de Sant Jordi, to the cathedral and the castle at the top. Walking the ramparts takes an hour; the harbour view from the Baluard de Santa Llúcia is the photograph everyone comes for. Below the walls, the Puig des Molins necropolis and its museum hold over 3,000 Punic tombs, and are almost always empty.

Go up at six in the evening, not at noon. The stone reflects heat like a fan oven, and the light on the ochre walls in the last hour is the whole reason to be there.

Walking, water and the outdoors

The Ses Salines Natural Park covers 3,000 hectares of salt pans, dunes and posidonia seagrass beds — itself a UNESCO listing — and has flamingos on the water in spring and autumn. Flat, easy walking on marked paths, and it connects the two southern beaches.

Sa Talaia, at 475 metres, is the island's high point. The walk up from Sant Josep takes about ninety minutes and gives you both coasts and Es Vedrà from the top. The coastal path from Cala d'Hort to Es Vedrà's viewpoints is shorter and more dramatic. In the north, the trail between Portinatx and Cala d'en Serra is the prettiest hour of walking on Ibiza.

On the water: kayaking and paddleboarding are the island's most underrated activities. The north coast between Portinatx and Cala Xarraca has caves, arches and water clear enough to see the bottom at eight metres. Rentals run €15–25 an hour, and the wind gets up after midday almost every day, so go early.

The markets

Las Dalias at Sant Carles is the older and better of the two: Saturdays year-round, plus Monday and Tuesday night markets in summer, with actual craftspeople among the imported tie-dye. Punta Arabí at Es Canar, running Wednesdays since 1973, is the bigger and more commercial. Go to Las Dalias on a Saturday morning if you want to buy something you will still like at home; go to the Monday night market if you want the atmosphere.

Formentera and boat trips

Formentera is thirty minutes away by fast ferry from Ibiza Town and looks like nowhere else in Europe — a low, flat sandbar of an island with water the colour of a swimming pool. It is the best day trip from Ibiza by a wide margin. Ferries run every half hour in summer, cost €45–60 return, and you should hire a scooter or a bicycle on arrival at La Savina rather than trying to walk anywhere.

Boat trips from Ibiza fall into three types: the Es Vedrà and Formentera full day (€55–75, the best value), the sunset cruise (€40–60, pleasant, brief), and the private charter (€600–2,000 a day, genuinely the best way to see the island if there are six of you splitting it).

When the weather turns

It rains here — mostly in October and November, occasionally hard. The indoor options are better than you would expect: the Museu Arqueològic in Dalt Vila, the Puig des Molins necropolis museum, the Museu d'Art Contemporani, the covered market and the galleries of the Plaça de Vila. Add a long lunch in Santa Gertrudis and a wet day passes perfectly well.

What things cost

The island's daylight hours are much cheaper than its nights. Dalt Vila, Ses Salines, Sa Caleta and every walking trail are free. The two paid museums are €2.40 each. The genuine costs are the Formentera ferry (€45–60), a boat trip (€55–75) and car hire (€35–90 a day in season). A couple can fill five days for well under €200 between them, excluding food.

Honestly overrated

The Atlantis hike. Every year people are rescued off that descent. There is no beach at the bottom and the scramble back up in 35°C heat is genuinely dangerous. Skip it.

The Sant Antoni sunset strip. Historically important, now a crowded pavement with a €14 cocktail and a sound system. The sunset is better from any west-coast cala. Hippy market shopping at Punta Arabí, if you want island crafts rather than imported wholesale — go to Forada or Las Dalias instead. And the water park, which is fine, but you have come to an island with the clearest water in the western Mediterranean.