Villa Mahal

There are 181 steps between Villa Mahal's rooms and the sea, according to the bartenders' T-shirts. Ipek, a former graphic designer, fell for Kalkan in 1982 and had built the villa from scratch by 1987, somewhere so remote that most of the materials came by boat or by donkey. It is now fourteen rooms and suites and four villas, white walls and tiled roofs stepping down the eastern shore of the bay. One roof is a lawn, with two deckchairs on it facing an island. The infinity pool is a triangle, hung out over the bay. The steps end at the Beach Club, built into the rocks, where each room and suite has its own wooden deck and the bay is one jump away. The spa is in a low-lit stone cave, with the waves sounding off its walls, and anyone wary of caves can have a massage in a veiled pavilion by the shore.

Recommended for couples who would rather swim off a rock than lie on sand, and who count the stairs as exercise. Children under twelve cannot stay in the rooms, though the villas take any age. The day runs downhill. Breakfast is Turkish, up on the roof terrace; lunch is at The Waterside, over the water; and by evening the Beach Club has been lit for dinner. For more ceremony, the staff can set a lamp-lit table on a platform over the bay, down a staircase cut into the rock. The free water taxi into Kalkan stops at seven, after which the way home from dinner in town is ten minutes by road, or under half a mile on foot with many steps in it.