Lido Apartmentos

Lido Apartmentos by night looks like the entrance to a Soviet hospital block, amid the relatively desolate, restaurant-dominated chill-out zone of Figueretas on the southeast edge of Ibiza - a calm, if not tired and lumbering respite from the chavesty that is San Antonio et al.

We were greeted by a sweaty, defeated-looking receptionist - a bloke with a face baked into fault line cracks of public service despair. Some of the Spanish in this resort aren’t so fond of the English. This one wasn’t so fond of me.
‘Spencer Austin?’ he asked with suspicion, as though I was the only one to
check-in since the fall of the wall. At that moment, the sound of a packet of
Haribo being dropped down to the service bin of the lonely vending machine
echoed around a dark, characterless reception – and at exactly that point my
spirit plundered below expectation. ‘This looks a right S*hole’, I thought.

But despite the corridors looking like a prison hulk ship, with rows and rows of identical doors (each of which doubtlessly harboring similar stories within - of alcoholic ruin and chemical mash-up bound in a fog of fart), the self-catering apartment we discovered was surprisingly airy, bright and comfortable. If you particularly enjoy the 1990s style of pastel-shaded zig-zag print on your furniture and watercolour paintings of Victorian ladies perpetually either getting on or off a boat, then this is the number for you. With a balcony big enough for table and chairs and a small, practical kitchen with a fridge and freezer section, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t while away the late afternoon with a home made vodka- limon while pointing out German tourists in the twilight below donning hilariously tight Speedo swimming trunks regardless of the prowess or paltry state of their
package.

The pool is a typical affair, with balconies looming over it, strewn with beach
towels emblazoned with hilarious comic motifs (such as ‘Official Female Body
Inspector’) and containing spaced-out voyeurs using their ledge to edge
themselves with a paranoid grimace back into the real world after another epic night on the Ibizan tiles.

And it’s these very disco monsters that you’ll need to beware of at hotels around here. All is well until around 5am; when the clubbers, off their noodle on ecstasy pipes, coke tablets and acid cakes, return to continue their nocturnal knockings.

They make noise. And not just doors shutting and exuberant, flirty
goodnights…I’m talking guttural, gurning chatter of the volume and intensity I’d only ever imagined possible at a Women’s Institute sherry tasting event.

Overall, Lido is a perfectly fine, typical Ibiza hotel. No cockroaches, nothing
stolen and clean enough to eat off. Just expect to be awake early (or late,
depending on your orientation).