Grace Hotel

When it comes to jaw-dropping views, there are some places in this world that have a blithe disregard for the rules of fair play. From the get-go, they seize the high ground and bludgeon you into submission with impossibly gorgeous vistas. Some literally take your breath away with their high-altitude scenery – Namaste, Bhutan! – while others convince you that you’ve passed through into another dimension altogether. The latter is more or less how we felt the first time Mr Smith and I stepped onto the spacious patio at Grace Hotel and stared out over the famous volcanic caldera.

Shaped like a crescent moon, the island embraces a vast blue lagoon created thousands of years ago when devastating volcanic explosions caused the centre of the island to collapse into the sea. Almost every vantage point along the high-cliffed inner edge of the crescent bristles with crowds of white buildings. In high summer, it’s blinding. Here and there, blue cupolas mark a chapel, while slashes of azure, visible from the narrow paths that wind their way through the terraced buildings, invariably indicate the swimming pool of a hotel.

On Santorini, location is everything. Oía, the picturesque town at the northern tip of the island, suffers from an overabundance of tourists and streets clogged with tour buses. Thera, in the island’s centre, is equally crowded. Happily, the Grace is set a leisurely 40-minute walk from Thera in a quiet enclave of hotels (catering from low- to high-end budgets). Here, the illusion of seclusion is complete, especially when the morning mists shroud the high ground.

But that afternoon, as we checked in, Santorini lay before us in Olympus-like majesty, the soft rustling wind riding over the low Buddha Bar tracks piped over the stereo. Far below us in the caldera, we saw three cruiseships tooling around the flat sapphire water like little fat baby whales. A mesmerising stillness hung over the blue-tinged air.

It’s a view that, even four days later, we never tired of. ‘I don’t ever want to leave,’ I said at the end of the first day as we closed the shuttered double-glazed windows. And why would you ever need to? The Grace is one of those hotels that conspires to keep you happily captive: If you ever wondered what it feels like to be a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, this would be the place to try it.

The hotel’s 20 rooms, gym, restaurant, library, swimming pools and sundecks are terraced into the side of the cliff in a cascade of white walls and black rock buttresses. Inside, the rooms are sheathed entirely in white, and the flooring in cool polished grey concrete. Shelving, bedside tables and seats are hewn straight into the rock giving the space a very pleasing Francis of Assisi meets Four Seasons monastic feel. Our bed is a vast tract of white linen floating over triple mattress layers of coconut and rubber, all cushioned by layers of plump pillows; while the huge rainshower-studded ensuite is stocked with attention-grabbing bath and body products by local Greek brand Apivita.

Aromatherapy pillow ordered from the pillow menu, Mr Smith sighed at the view of the caldera through the bevelled windows. ‘Or should I get the goosedown instead?’ I wondered aloud, impressed by the gravity of such Solomon-like decisions.

And that was pretty much the pattern of our days. When we weren’t bobbing gently in the outdoor heated Jacuzzi, we lay supine under the sun umbrellas next to beds of lavender abuzz with lazy fat bumblebees. The April weather was still a little too cold to dip into one of the two spectacular pools that stretch out on separate levels. ‘Maybe we should stay on until the weather turns really hot?’ I suggested hopefully over our breakfast of Greek yoghurt with nuts and blossom honey, and poached eggs.

One morning, stirred by an uncharacteristic burst of energy, we descended the broad donkey steps next to the resort, past a bijoux 15th-century chapel and then we climbed up towards Scarpa, an irregular nub of a cliff that was once the island’s capital before an earthquake destroyed it.

These days, the natural drama is entirely botanical. The cliffs were festooned with yellow daisies and bursts of purple flowers. A gentle breeze rocked the sea below. We sat on a pile of shale and looked out over the Aegean, imagining that the fabled city of Atlantis – long rumoured to have been located in Santorini – had been just there in the little alcove where a cruiseliner now anchored.

It was a little surreal, too, to think that back in London at that very moment, Prince William was getting hitched to Kate. ‘I hope they’ll be happy,’ I mumbled shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare. We sat in companionable silence. Seagulls wheeled overhead and the breeze carried up the scent of grass and the approaching summer.

Presently, Mr Smith said, ‘Come on, then. Time for lunch.’