Blue sky thinking: six sun-drenched seaside getaways in southern Europe
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From a secret harbour in Crete to the wild beaches of Portugal, our writers share the summer haunts they can’t wait to return to. Depending on how you look at it, Loutro is either deeply inhospitable or a rare slice of seaside perfection. Backed by Crete’s hulking White Mountains, this tiny harbour – a curve of whitewash-and-blue, lapped by the Libyan Sea – is only reachable by boat or on foot. Getting here takes effort. Once you’ve settled in to its rhythms, though, leaving is harder still.
![[Loutro is only easily accessible by boat.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b8cd358375b0ee0b1decf0f3698555a944eafd55/0_0_5400_3240/master/5400.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Humans have been making that effort for millennia. Loutro sits on the site of Phoenix, an ancient Greek and Roman harbour. Saracen pirates used it as a base for attacking passing ships. The Venetians drove them off, and built a small fortress; the Turks later did the same, and ruins of both still cling to the hills. But now there’s no such turbulence. Loutro feels apart from such things. Apart from all things. Here, life is shrunk to about 400 metres, the distance from the first taverna to the last.
![[Stromboli ‘looks like an imaginary island from childhood’.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7a0ce05328142e23ce11960a3c7320f6e2fb5fa7/1547_0_7901_4746/master/7901.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
I walked in, along part of the mighty E4 trail, which starts 6,300 miles away, in Spain. Hot and sticky, I took a simple room at Hotel Ilios (from around €55), right by the water’s edge – most of Loutro’s guesthouses are. With the windows wide open, I stretched out and listened: soft chants from the church, the hypnotic schwoosh of the sea. My hosts were the family Androulakakis: the old man sat sentry on a chair in the shade while his wife conjured creamy tzatziki, Sfakian cheese pie and fish stew in the kitchen; their sons served the dishes, plus carafes of quaffable rosé and, inevitably, raki – the potent conclusion to every meal, free and free-flowing.
![[Small eruptions are frequent on Stromboli.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9cef2dfcb461cdaaaf9b2f909fd14f985602c9f0/0_153_5472_3283/master/5472.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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