Minos Palace

The setting does most of the talking. Built out along its own privately owned headland on the gentler eastern coast of Crete, the resort looks back at the water from almost every angle, an all-but-360-degree sea view that very few places in Greece can match. There are 148 rooms, suites and bungalows stepping down to the shore; the more private of them, the sharing-pool suites and the Waterfall suites with their own pools, trade lawn for water and quiet. A small private beach and a watersports centre sit below, with the Nao Longevity Hub above.

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The table

Dining is spread along the rock rather than boxed into a single room: a clutch of restaurants and a pool bar, most of them facing the bay, leaning on Cretan produce and the long Mirabello evenings. It is resort cooking with a sense of place, eaten with the sea on three sides.

Why it's in VANE

Eastern Crete is the calmer Crete, and Minos Palace takes the best of it, a near-island position, adults only, none of the package-holiday churn. You come for the geography as much as the rooms: a headland that gives you the sea whichever way you turn.