Rhodes

Pefkos is a resort town, and not a pretty one. There is very little in it to write home about, and then you see the beach and stop minding. It was a fishing hamlet once, named for the pines on the hill behind it, and the main beach is sand, with no motorised watersports to churn up the bay. We stayed in a house on top of a cliff at the edge of town, looking out over that bay, where the water was so calm it hardly seemed to move.

We went in May, before the searing heat of summer sets in. July and August are the hottest months and the most crowded, with Europe's school holidays filling the resorts, and by August the prices have caught up. Philosophia is in a garden directly above the main beach, and the staff there treated us like family. We behaved like it, too: we came for lunch, and came back for dinner.

For two families with children sharing a house, where we stayed was perfect: Lindos ten minutes' drive away, and the party crowds of Faliraki, the busiest of the east coast resorts, at a safe distance. The south was probably the best part of the island for us, a verdict reached without seeing any of the rest of it, Rhodes Town and its medieval walls included.

Lindos is the trip out. Its whitewashed houses climb the hill to an acropolis on the headland, and its streets are closed to cars, though not to donkeys or mopeds. The cobbled lanes and the alleys winding off them are beautiful and worth the drive. They are also very busy, and with small children not much fun. Five minutes' walk through the village is St Paul's Bay, closed in by rock but for one narrow gap to the open sea, with the white chapel of Agios Pavlos at the water's edge. Tambakio is the only restaurant on the beach, with tables right on the water, and the best of them, the ones that look up to the acropolis, are reservation only. St Paul is said to have landed here in about AD 51, when a bolt of lightning split the rock to let his ship through. Everyone else has to book.