I think we are all quite agree on this certainty that I bring today to Hotelísimos: the best moment of the day, of vacations and even of life is breakfast and I won't get off this donkey (let me go, I tell you!).
It is that it is at breakfast when time has another texture —you are still between sleep and wakefulness, half dazed— the world is waking up before your eyes and the first smells arrive, flooding the senses every morning, the world is born a little each day.
Alcaufar Vell, Menorca.
In Artichoke Vell that moment (the walk from the stone room to the table) is simply pure emotional synesthesia: the sound of fresh water waking up the plants, a hummingbird crossing the sky, the wind weaving a dance among the pines. And you get to your table under those pines and the clocks stop; ensaimada and coffee, fresh fruit and cured meats from the island. books on the table and the shelter of the shade, something like this is my exact idea of a perfect moment; in the Japanese tradition they call this moment ichigo ichie (“once, one chance”), neither then nor later. Here and now. What is going to happen right now it will never be repeated.
In Menorca, by the way, they use an expression that every day I try to apply more to my life: little by little. Menorca and Japan, united by the love of minuscule pleasures and respect for the old, here the stones speak and almost always the ancient protects the sacred.
Artichoke Vell, this beautiful hotel located in a property of 250 hectares of you walk and paths to the sea, occupies a stately estate dating from the 18th century that is the history of the island, the Mercadal family sinks its roots to the year of the conquest (the first Mercadal appears in Menorca in 1287) and that the farm remains in their hands (and not in an investment fund that is only interested in making cash at the end of the season) translates into care, respect and truth.
Not far from the hotel they hide Calo Roig and one of those coves because it is worth crossing a planet: Alcaufar, one of those corners that I even have trouble counting because I wish they would always stay tucked away in the drawer of (my) secrets. But here we have come to play.
“The everyday canvas is not altered: groups of children looking for crabs on the rocks with their nets at the ready, fishing boats arriving in the middle of the afternoon while ebel scales catching him and the retirees of the town watch from their steps young people peering into the caves and rocky cliffs in front, assiduous families with the baby taking his first steps on the beach, busy walkers on the Camí de Cavalls crossing the sand and, in the background, the usual chattering on the benches of the ladder while Torn Islet does not lose detail of the whole scene.
is our dear Matoses and those are exactly the color and life of this infinite cove: How happy we are here always. At mid-afternoon we return to the farm, Hotelísimos was born to narrate the experience that beats behind those transcendent, important hotels. Places to be. But this stop in the southeast of Menorca has a different temperature because here the transcendence is not born from the immensity but from the detail and the rock, the transcendence (I see it more and more there) in the little things, tiny pleasures, a little more in the pool watching the turtles.
That night we will have dinner again fresh under a blanket of galaxies Ullastres Garden: 'lloc' cuisine without many complications (I am less and less interested in complications) but rather simplicity at the table, connection to the territory and the cupboard. What do I know: oliaigua, Menorcan cheeses or the fresh fish of the day.
I recently read that art is the enemy of urgency, but I believe that it also applies to life, at least to the life that I choose to live; Laura's tanned skin, the glasses on the white tablecloth of the table and this crisp feel that there is no better time than now, it is impossible.