Menorca Experimental

A pine stands beside the main house at Menorca Experimental, big enough that when the sun is low its shadow covers half the front. The house is a white nineteenth-century finca with dark shutters and arched windows under the eaves. Dorothée Meilichzon did the inside when it opened in 2019, to an idea the hotel calls an artist's holiday retreat: pale olive wood and terracotta tiles glazed by hand. The artist has got as far as the shelves, where a book on Guernica stands among cobalt-blue vases and straw hats. Nine rooms stand apart from the finca, each with a garden and a plunge pool. Everyone else makes do with the infinity pool, full to its edge, with dry grasses beyond.

Recommended for couples who want the country and the coast together, and for parents of a baby: the rooms take one child of three or under, and none older. The coast is fifteen minutes on foot along the Camí de Cavalls, at Cala Llucalari, a cove of stones; anyone who wants sand drives ten minutes to Son Bou, the island's longest beach. There is no gym, so personal training goes out onto the Camí de Cavalls instead, which has the better view. Further out, the hotel arranges boat trips to coves with no way in from land. Dinner comes out of an open kitchen, from the estate's own gardens. The room to ask for shares its name with the cove: the Llucalari Rooftop Terrace Room, which has a 30-square-metre terrace on its roof and only two square metres more indoors.