Eliamos Villas Hotel & Spa

In Greek an elia is an olive and thalassa is the sea, and at Eliamos the Elia villas look over the olive grove the hotel is set into, while the Thalassa villas look out over the Ionian. The Elia Maisonette, on two floors, gets both, for anyone who cannot decide. The villas are low buildings of pale stone and white render under terracotta tiles, one of them with a roof grown over in grasses, and the paths between them run through lavender and rosemary on a clifftop above Spartia, looking towards Mount Ainos. Inside, a living room is beamed in timber and hung with woven plates, and its glass doors slide back onto a terrace and a heated pool, with the sea beyond.

Recommended for couples who want a pool to themselves, and for families who need the bedrooms: the Eliamos Three Bedroom Villa sleeps seven, and adds a jacuzzi and an outdoor dining table in a garden of its own. There is no kids club, though the hotel arranges arts and crafts, and Olais, the restaurant, keeps a children's menu beside its Mediterranean cooking from local, seasonal produce, served on a terrace over the Ionian. For the rest of the island, the hotel lends e-bikes free and will arrange a sailing trip to Ithaca or a guided climb up Mount Ainos, the mountain in the view. Closer in, the cove below the villas is a flight of steps down, and unlike the villas' own pools, nobody heats it.