Therasia

The walls are thick the way old Cretan walls are thick — half a metre of stone, hand-cut, set without hurry. The windows are deep, set into the wall the way you'd set a painting into a frame. They are doing one thing only: holding the sea.

Inside, the room is quieter than the outside. Stone takes the heat of the day and gives it back at night, slowly, the way a fire does after the flame has gone. The bed faces the window. The window faces south. South is the Libyan Sea, and beyond that, Africa.

A small step down to the bath — a stone bath, candle-lit, set into a recess that has its own arched window, its own square of horizon. You will spend more time in here than you expect. Most people do.