IF YOU are daring to dream of a holiday in the sun before the year ends, or when it is safe to travel abroad, two new books, aptly named Great Escapes, provide the necessary compass points.
With hundreds of enticing pictures and practical information packed into their pages, one of the most satisfying parts of a holiday presents itself: choosing the hotel where your wheelie will be unpacked, clothes laid out and sunglasses put to good use.
Villa Lemonia on Kythera off the southern tip of the Peloponnese
Great Escapes Greece opens with a map of the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean, pinpointing the locations of nearly forty places to stay. About one third are on the mainland, either in the far north or dotted around the southern peninsulas of the Peloponnese.
Northern Greece, relatively untravelled territory for sun seekers, offers stone-built villages, rural hikes, locally sourced food (truffles and mushrooms from woodlands, thyme-scented honey) and bedrooms in artfully restored traditional houses. Imaret, with a unique Egyptian connection, and Eagles Palace, a resort hotel on the Chalkidiki coast, are examples of luxury that whet the appetite.
Great Escapes: Mediterranean by Angelika Taschen
The Mani region of the southern Peloponnese attracts discerning travellers seeking an alternative to a beach holiday but with the same guarantee of sunshine and glorious views. The further south you venture, the more rugged the beauty and winding the roads. Tower houses dot the landscape of this once lawless place and one of them has been superbly converted into Tainaron Blue Retreat. Its restaurant specialities include capers and smoked monastery cheeses while al fresco breakfast on the wooden verandah looking out to sea should help make lockdowns a forgettable thing of the past.
Great Escapes: Greece by Angelika Taschen
A short boat ride away, on the divine island of Kythera – the goddess Aphrodite was born here – Great Escapes Greece highlights two charming places to stay. The rest of the book picks out a variety of island retreats, from sybaritic Mykonos to apartments at Coco-Mat Eco Residences on Syros. A ferry ride from Rhodes, on the easternmost island of Kastelorizo, Mediterraneo Kastelorizo beckons as a perfect getaway: sunshine, yoga workshops and the owner’s shop with fabrics and clothes from Greece, Turkey, France and India.
Great Escapes Mediterranean also covers many of these Greek delights but broadens the canvas to include the west coast of Italy, south of France, Majorca, Corsica and some smaller islands. North Africa has only entry, in Tangier, but for this you get to see the Atlantic merging with the Mediterranean on the horizon.
Great Escapes: Mediterranean by Angelika Taschen
The strength of these two books is adherence to core qualities of design, style and creature comforts without being a slave to snobbery. There is an eye for character and background detail in singling out special places to stay. So, while glitz and glamour surrounds the Bay of Naples, at Hotel Villa Krupp you can share the space where Lenin stayed when he came here in 1908 to visit the writer Maxim Gorki.
More romantically, Stromboli is haunted by the transgressive love affair between Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini when they came to the volcanic island to make a film and La Locanda Del Barbablù is directly opposite the house where they lived.
Tainaron Blue Retreat on the Mani peninsula
For the sense of being inside an Italian movie yourself, the décor, atmosphere and location of a place has to create a alchemy of its own and La Minervetta, manages to do this with Vesuvius in the distance, vivaciousness in the air and an indefinable stylishness.
Great Escapes Mediterranean conjures up a picture of La Conca Del Sogno, on the Amalfi Coast, that will have you pining for passport control: six bedrooms ‘in the colours of the sun, sea and sky’, a renowned restaurant and fiery sunsets. A daydream you don’t want to wake up from.
Maybe it’s nostalgia and pure longing at work but the pages of these two books from Taschen draw you in to planning one holiday, then another one and one more after that.
Mediterraneo Kastelorizo, closer to Turkey than the Greek mainland. Photo by Julia Klimi
by Sean Sheehan
Great Escapes Mediterranean and Great Escapes Greece is available at £40 each, at taschen.com