Light and Fruity

There are four themes on offer, all carefully designed by pastry chef Penny Wabbit – Chocolate Indulgence, Light and Fruity, Tea and Coffee and All Iced Up. I chose the Light and Fruity and my companion, the Tea and Coffee. The Light and Fruity certainly looked the part, and lived up to its name, with all four desserts containing some variation on the summer fruits theme – the Blueberry cheesecake was delicious, and the Strawberry Pavlova, a favourite – delicate, light and perfectly balanced sweetness and sharpness. All in all, this dish was a pleasure and topped off with a strong Raspberry Rumble cocktail, deemed an all round success.

Tea and Coffee

However the Tea and Coffee platter did not go down well – our Earl Grey parfait came off tasting medicinal, whilst the walnut cake with Kahlua jelly was dry. Saving grace came from the Tea for Grownups cocktail which pushed things in the right direction but we’d recommend skipping the Tea and Coffee altogether and going for the All Iced Up dish instead where we fared much better.

All Iced Up

The lemon verbena and raspberry parfait was one of the best desserts we’ve eaten all year – rich and smooth with the citrus flavour of the verbena coming through strongly without overpowering the senses; sublime. The terrine of passion fruit, lychee, pomegranate, made to look like a slab of neapolitan ice cream was a lovely delicate sorbet dish, and the mint chocolate chip cone – perhaps to be used in the manner of after dinner mint? – was promptly devoured. The varying textures and flavours of this platter made it a Globalista favourite and we’d happily order this again.

At £19.50 this updated version of afternoon tea is certainly good value, and makes a nice break from tradition. The OXO Brasserie setting – big glass windows, metal chairs, modern fittings – doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the idea of a cosy afternoon tea, so it’s a great idea for any sweet tooths wanting an alternative ritual in a different setting. Just make sure to take a good long walk afterwards – four desserts and a cocktail can have a devastatingly soporific effect.

For more information click here. For bookings call 020 7803 3888 or email oxo.reservations@harveynichols.com

• In The NY Times Eric Asamov gets his mouth around Txakolina, a Tongue-Twisting Name for Simple Pleasure. “This is the land of Txakolina, the bracing, refreshing, often fizzy white wine that is enjoyed throughout Basque country.”
• “There is no drinking forum more compatible with summer than the beer garden…But in the last year or so, beer gardens have sprouted across the city.” In The NY Times Robert Simonson recommends the best of them in Beer Gardens Bloom Around the City.
• “If you like drinking wine half as much as you enjoy cricket, Australia is a brilliant place to follow a cricket tour. Australia’s winemakers are second to none when it comes to welcoming visitors into their vineyards and cellars.” In The Telegraph Robert Joseph recommends the best places to try Australian wine: a taste of cricket whites… and reds.
• The Guardian brings us the classier side of all-day drinking in One for the road. From a real ale tram trail in Yorkshire to vineyard cycling in Kent and Essex – here are some real thirst quenchers for August.

Globalista has just returned from a magical 36 hours trip to the Gorges du Verdon.

Starting as we did from Grasse, you take the Route Napoleon to Castellane which is a windy, beautiful 60km drive through magnificent countryside.

Our recommended stopping off point for lunch is just before Castellane in La Garde at the old fashioned roadside Auberge du Teillon (don’t expect great service. When asked if we could order after 20 minutes we were told, ‘not now’). But the food was excellent, particularly their Lavender tasting menu, in the summer (+33 4 92 83 60 88; www.auberge-teillon.com).

The Gorges du Verdon start soon after Castellane and throughout the 50km drive through to Moustiers you’ll be overawed by the scenery which is quite sensational (though if you’re the driver you won’t be able to enjoy it that much as the road is pretty narrow and in some parts quite vertiginous, but there are innumerable points to stop and marvel).

One recommended activity is to swim in the river flowing through the Gorges which is easiest to do in the first 10/15km out of Castellane as the road is only a few metres above the river. You’ll see where to swim either by looking out for the parked cars or the yellow danger signs.

Arriving in Moustiers, where we’d strongly suggest staying the night – being one of the most beautiful villages in France, you have a difficult choice as to where to stay.

La Bouscatière

You can either stay right in the village at the simple but enchanting husband and wife owned small hotel La Bouscatière (+33 4 92 74 67 67; www.labouscatiere.com) where the rooms overlook the fiercely flowing river running through the centre of the town (you may want to close your windows at night as the noise of the water maybe deafening for some, though we found it soporific) and eat at the hotel’s outdoor restaurant. At night it has to be one of the most romantic restaurants imaginable. Dinner is a delight but very simple with just a choice of grilled meat from the barbecue.

La Bastide de Moustiers

Or you can stay a kilometre away at the infinitely more luxurious Alain Ducasse-owned La Bastide de Moustiers (+33 4 92 70 47 47; www.bastide-moustiers.com) which is equally enchanting but very different. You’ll eat superbly in their outdoor restaurant with lovely views over the unspoilt countryside.

Lunch at La Bastide de Moustiers

Or as Globalista did you can try both; we stayed and had supper at the La Bouscatière with a magical post supper walk through the village, a superb breakfast on the terrace and then the next morning drove in search of lavender fields before a delicious lunch at La Bastide de Moustiers, the highlight of which was an exceptional dish of Black Pork. If you try it the other way round you should ensure dinner at La Bouscatière which is when with the candles flickering, it’s at its most romantic.

We’ve just visited the Restaurant la Guérite on the Ile Sainte Marguerite opposite Cannes and we couldn’t recommend it more highly.

If you’re not a boat person don’t worry, getting there is easy. Simply go to the Port Pierre Canto at the end of the Croisette and right at the end of the Port opposite the Capitainerie there is a restaurant navette that goes back and forth all day.

The restaurant is divided into two. At the front overlooking the sea is the main restaurant which is very similar in style and cuisine to Club 55 in St Tropez and at the back without any views and largely with long benches is the cafe.

The food is excellent. Either go for the menu or if a la carte try the raw vegetables with their delicious anchovy sauce and the lobster spaghetti.

And for after the rosè you can book one of the sun loungers at the side of the Restaurant with views over to Cannes and beyond.

It’s quite divine and to be highly recommended.

Contact +33 4 93 43 49 30; www.laguerite.fr
For  more information on St Tropez, take a look at our Globalista St Tropez report

• In The NY Times Susanne Fowler discovers a new festival Blending Jazz and Religion in Istanbul. “A series of eight concerts will be held at two open-air venues…But the most interesting element linking the shows is that they are taking place during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, as part of a series called — what else? — Jazz in Ramadan.”
• Valerie Gladstone in The NY Times is Under Madrid Skies, the Stars of Flamenco. “…every summer in Spain the greatest flamenco artists work their magic on stages under the stars. But even among all those superb festivals, the flamenco-related portion of the Veranos de la Villa festival in Madrid, which runs from Aug. 10 to 21, stands out.”
• In The NY TImes Seth Sherwood enjoys Normandy’s Quiet Glamour in the Côte Fleurie – the Cote D’Azur’s less showy northern counterpart. Sherwood gets under the skin of the film festivals and art history of Honfleur, Cabourg and Deauville.

There’s almost enough space on board the plane to play baseball – 32 flat-bed seats (but room for 100 ordinary seats); decent enough food of the asparagus and port reduction drizzle variety; fabulous service (when I flew, if there had been one more passenger we’d have outnumbered the crew); and a cute mobile phone icon which tells you when you may contact Earth.

I powered my laptop, pressed a buzzer for help which arrived within a nanosecond and used enough hot towels to open a Chinese restaurant. Then, seemingly moments later, we touched down at JFK’s domestic airport. Perhaps uniquely for a commercial carrier, I was the only person on the flight with checked-in baggage (is there a social stigma attached to being the only loser who has enough spare time to wait to retrieve checked luggage?).

Next we test drove the Farrell limousine service. This is one of New York’s most expensive car companies, offering a service that is beloved of discreet celebrities, private money and families into their fourth generation of Farrell hire. They have gleaming clean sedans, stretchers and formals, plus vans for the Louis Vuitton and professional-beyond-professional, always-early, often multilingual drivers. (‘It’s the best limo service in Manhattan,’ says The Mark Hotel’s general manager, James Sherwin, sitting later in his office among gratefully signed photos from British royals and Very Important People.)

Our first stop is The Mark, the 1923 über-chic Upper East Side hotel with 100 rooms and 50 suites. It’s fresh from a $150 million refit by Jacques Grange – who boasts the Légion d’honneur and is decorator to Princess Caroline and formerly to Yves Saint Laurent – and reopened in August 2009. It’s more like an impressive contemporary gallery than a hotel, but a gallery where your every need and whim is tended to by an impeccable staff. In this ‘gallery’, renowned designers from Paul Mathieu to Vladimir Kagan have created one-off pieces for the playful ground-floor rooms.

The lobby has a jazzy black and white marble floor and ‘Ge-Off Sphere’ Ron Arad pendant light; there is a witty, cloud-shaped bar by Guy de Rougemont and a herd of pony-skin sofas and bespoke geometric carpet; the restaurant has upholstered bar stools and free standing curved banquettes; and upstairs is a more muted kind of chic. Every time you look there seems to be another well-known face being welcomed by the hotel’s Turnbull & Asser clad staff. Oh look, that’s Woody Allen. And there’s Barbara Walters.

We’re just one block from Central Park (think passing hounds fresh from shampoo and set, with Tina Turneresque accessories and private roof gardens on which to cock their pretty legs) and at the centre of the civilised world, near the Met, the Frick, the Guggenheim and the Whitney. But it’s our elder daughter Anya’s first time in NY and (aside from the sartorial hell-hole that is Abercrombie & Fitch, with its torso-baring shop assistants and Glastonbury-decibel music) Harlem is high on her to-do list.

We sightsee in a Farrell Cadillac stretch, driving around the new look Harlem-meets-Zurich – the former black spot polished up by Rudy Giuliani with his hit squads and now full of smiling policemen thanks to Michael Bloomberg and moved into by Bill Clinton with his office. We pass a bright yellow ‘Sidewalk Sunday School’ van wreathed in balloons: God has moved in mysterious ways to replace the burned-out cars of yesteryear. Then we drive past Sylvia’s Restaurant where the politicians hang out for soul food of pigs’ trotters and gizzards, and which has now become a global food brand.

Back on the Upper East Side we lunch at The Wright, the Guggenheim’s recently opened arty restaurant with an iconic Frank Lloyd Wright museum attached. It’s in a sleek white-on-white space – designed by Andre Kikoski, a leading new-garde architect – with curvilinear walnut walls and a layered white ceiling that echoes the original corkscrew building.

It serves modern American (seasonal, local and sustainable) food cooked by ex David Bouley chef, Rodolfo Contreras. Its 58 seats and communal table are packed. Think signature dishes like green market vegetables with slowly cooked egg and truffle and Michelin-style presentation. I don’t get the benefit of cooking an egg slowly but, hey, the food passes muster.

After lunch it’s time to test drive another car company, Jeff Kaplan’s E-Z Ryder. It’s the favourite of in-the-know Lady Cosima Somerset of Concierge London and NYC fame. (An erstwhile friend of Princess Di and niece of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Lady Cosima knows how to pick classy wheels.) Outside a big sign in the window of a four-wheel drive reads ‘E-Z Ryder Welcomes Caroline’. E-Z Ryder is a small, family-run business, with its cars with blacked-out windows, and another celebrity car firm of choice.

We do a lifetime of shopping and our accommodating driver seems never to tire of circling the block to avoid parking restrictions. We visit the sort of adolescent must-see emporiums that would exhaust you just wading through their names on a list. Meanwhile E-Z Ryder is a teen dream with its armrest full of candies and gums. And as the parcels and packages pile up, we use the car as a luggage depot. (There’s little better than going shopping with a driver.)

So which shops to recommend? Abercrombie, American Apparel and Victoria’s Secret be damned. My personal favourite and top of the (non-adolescent) list is Bellhaus, the new lifestyle store aimed at the working woman and fashionable man. It’s Dover Street Market meets, er, Beach in the City. It sells ready-to-wear (including many American designers) plus accessories, candles, beauty, eye wear, Kilian fragrances, vintage pieces (up to $38,000) and Carlos Falchi daytime totes for $220.

Afterwards we have a sunset hour drink in Andre Balazs’ Boom Boom room at The Standard hotel. With its floor-to-ceiling windows (including in the loo) it enjoys spectacular views up the Hudson River. It’s a gawpingly great room 18 floors above the Meatpacking District with Art Deco-meets-contemporary features. A wannabe Studio 54, it has guest-list only pretensions, waitresses in skimpy dresses, a black-tiled room with triangular soaking tub, vertiginous glass-floored smoking terraces and hype to match.

In the evening, we return to The Mark. At this hour, slinky women in Christian Louboutin heels and fitted faces sit in the bar at low-flying cloud tables. Nearby, dapper men stand with practiced smiles and sky-scraper-deep pockets. As they follow their social X-rays into dinner in The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges (Vongerichten), we return to our suite: to a soothing place of custom-made furniture and black and white marble Art Deco bathroom. I could happily stay here for days longer. And just then we hear news of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. We couldn’t have planned it better….

Fares for the twice daily BA001 service start from £2,102, www.ba.com. Rooms at The Mark start from £535; +212 744 4300; www.themarkhotel.com. For Farrell call +212 861 6300. For Jeff Kaplan’s E-Z Ryder call +201 783 6663; www.ezryderlimo.com. Boom Boom Room is at the Standard Hotel; +212 645 4646; www.standardhotels.com

Where to stay:

Sveti Stefan, the second part of the new Aman is said to be fully re-opening in September (although whether it opens on time remains to be seen) to great fanfare. The setting is spectacular: the former fishing village turned hotel is on a small peninsula with an idyllic village of red-tile roofed houses that faces a sweeping shingly bay. Each little house or shop of the village has been turned into a hotel room, restaurant or shared space. There’s a restored church, a taverna, pizzeria, bakery and antipasti bar, plus spa facilities which will be added after opening. The island is beautiful to look at but the downside is that when you’re staying here, if you look back to the mainland your view will be of ugly concrete buildings. The whole island is for hotel guests and boats will shuttle guests between here and its sister hotel, Aman Villa Milocer which is already open. Having been a glamorous hotel in the 60s, it looks set to be so once again. (94) 777 743500; www.amanresorts.com/amansvetistefan

Villa Milocer, which opened earlier this year was once the residence of the royal family of Montenegro and is set amongst nine acres of parkland overlooking the Adriatic. The hotel is a stone villa with a cosy living room, library and dining room and a beach club where non-hotel guests can come and eat as well. The downside is that there is no pool, but the beach is on the doorstep and if you’re staying here, you can catch a boat to nearby Sveti Stefan and use its facilities. (94) 777 743500; www.amanresorts.com/amansvetistefan

Bianca Hotel & Spa, Kolasin. Up in the mountains, on the side of a lake, we hear nothing but good reports about this hotel. It’s perfect for skiing in winter and close to the Tara Canyon (see What to See below). (+382 20 863 000; www.biancaresort.com)

What to see:

Just round the coast from Sveti Stefan is Budva, the party capital of Montenegro. However, this once great town has turned into a concrete jungle with a strip of tacky bars next to the giant boats and tiny old town. Avoid. Also worth avoiding if you can is Podgorica, the financial capital, which is ugly, dusty and an incredibly chaotic city with no character or tourist attractions. It is always several degrees hotter here than on the coast, often has power cuts and no water during summer periods.

Instead, head inland for 30 minutes to the beautiful Bay of Kotor, which has a narrow opening out to sea and crystal clear waters backed by mountains. The medieval town of Kotor has a historic old town (smaller than Dubrovnik’s but thankfully, with far less cruise ships and tourists) with shops, restaurants and bars and plenty of boats in the small harbour. Climb up the ramifications for great views across the bay.

There are plenty of other little towns and villages around the bay worth a visit, including Perast, which despite only having one main street has 16 Baroque palaces and 19 churches, plus two small islands a two minute boat ride away (St George Island and Our Lady of the Rock), which each have a picturesque chapel. Further round the bay from Perast, Morinj is also well worth a visit for Catovici Mlini (+382 32 373 030; www.catovicamlini.me) which is widely agreed to be the best restaurant in the country. An old mill built over bubbling springs, it has shady tables with ducks waddling around, and fantastic food and local wine. You can also access the restaurant by boat.

For something far more glitzy and glamorous and a must-visit if you have a boat, head to Tivat and the new Porto Montenegro that’s been built with the backing of Bernauld Arnault, Nat Rothschild and Oleg Deripaska among others. At the moment the only part of the complex that’s finished is the huge beautiful marina, but it is also expected to have a Lido Beach Club, plus waterfront residencies (currently more of a building site).

And for an even less tourist-touched side of Montenegro, head further inland to one of the country’s national parks. Lake Skadar has 270 species of birds and is a nature lover’s paradise. There is a spectacular drive on the eastern side of the lake towards Albania which takes you through ancient chestnut forests, minarets and churches side by side, ancient villages and plenty of stunning views. The Tara Canyon is the largest canyon on the continent and a world heritage site where you can do white water rafting.

Also, in the mountains is the tiny city of Cetinje that can easily be explored in a couple of hours. There is a monastery which has the hand of John the Baptist on display, the old palace of King Nikola, an ethnographic museum and the Palace of the Bishop King and poet Niegos. The drive to Kotor from here is spectacular as you wind your way round the 37 hairpin bends towards the beautiful Bay of Kotor. Not to be missed.

When to go:

Anytime apart from winter when it can rain everyday for four months. It explains why the country is so lush and green but might not be when you want to take a holiday. It’s scorching in July and August, so go in June and September for more manageable temperatures.

Getting there:

Montenegro has two international airports, Podgorica and Tivat. Tivat is closest to the coastal resorts. Many people also choose to fly to Dubrovnik in Croatia, which is a one and a half hour drive from Kotor.

• In The FT Joyce Hor-Chung Lau recommends Braving Crowds at Hong Kong Book Fair. “Hong Kong, a city that loves its numbers, boasts that the 2010 Book Fair will have 200 cultural events, and 500 exhibitors from 20 countries and regions,” including the presence of British authors such as Stephen Fry, Andrew Roberts and Frederick Forsyth.
• “Santiago de Compostela is one of the most famous places of pilgrimage in the Christian world. But if you don’t want to do it on foot, you can let the train take the strain on a 12-day railway excursion with Explore. The journey is rich in history, art, spectacular ecclesiastical architecture and stunning landscapes.” In The Guardian Bob Maddams takes The train in Spain: a pilgrimage for softies.
• Roll up for Montréal’s first circus festival writes Ben Ross In The Independent.  ”Montréal Complètement Cirque is the first edition of what will be an annual festival in the city, with troupes arriving from all over the world to dazzle local audiences with athletic virtuosity, juggling talents, acrobatics, dancing skills and general clowning around.”  Ross also reveals a Montréal beyond the Big Top.

The lure of Lamu becomes immediately apparent if you stay in Jahazi, a Swahili-style house on a deserted beach about 25 minutes by boat from mainland Kenya at the southernmost tip of the island. You’re welcomed at the water’s edge by five staff – includingyour own boat captain and private chef – all wearing white shorts and Africa-sized smiles. With its private pool, fabulous baraza (meeting area), five colonial Swahili-style bedrooms and view of the Indian Ocean, many guests feel inclined simply to remain supine. (‘I hope for a massive storm so that we have to stay longer,’ scribbled Ewan McGregor in the visitors’ book.)

Jahazi is one of only six Kizingoni Beach Houses built next to what must be the longest stretch of deserted beach in the universe and surrounded by sand dunes. A few steps away from the ocean, the houses are built of coral block and plastered in the local limestone, with palm-thatched roofs, terraces overlooking the ocean, limestone floors tinted a soft ochre yellow and al fresco bathrooms beneath starry African skies (think also Swahili carved wooden door frames, colonial Swahili furniture and palm-leaf Ali Baba lampshades).

All you have to do here is move from one bed to another: from opium beds with big bolsters and oversized raw silk cushions to ones built on niru (plasterwork) bases, hammocks swinging in the breeze, romantic mozzie-net-draped four-posters, traditional Lamu day beds and kikoi-strewn beds swinging from coconut fibre ropes and overlooking the gardens. You wake up to alarm calls from tropical birds and to waves crashing on the white sand.

It’s compelling to spend days just flicking through magazines and eating the day’s catch and coconut rice, served on the terrace overlooking the ocean by the barefoot butler with the mega-watt smile. But Leslie Duckworth, known locally as the Duchess of Fixit, has other ideas for us. Probably the person who put Lamu so fashionably on the map, the Duchess is one of that peculiarly Kenyan breed of indefatigable entrepreneur. She knows le tout Afrique, manages the Kizingoni Beach Houses and has decorated them stylishly, writes books on African medicinal plants, buys and sells houses, is involved in the Lamu women’s community projects, has a shop in Nairobi…

She insists we stir ourselves and walk the few steps to the beach as night falls and the sky fills with stars. There we find a table set, Savoy-style, with a linen cloth and crockery, and at which we sit alone on a beach under the endless African sky eating succulent barbecued prawns and skewered crayfish followed by delicate passion fruit sorbet served by our butler. (Nets laden with fish from snapper to tuna are delivered daily to the beach.) Then Samburu warriors appear suddenly wearing vivid fabrics and bead and feather headdresses, and do frenetic and primitive tribal dances. There’s no sense that they’ve done this a million times before for tourists, because they haven’t.

The more energetic visitors can water-ski (a speedboat and boatman come with the house), donut, snorkel and swim the channel between the house and the mainland. (‘Amazing,’ concluded Sienna Miller in the guest book. ‘Swam with dolphins TWICE.’) Or you can get up at 6am and – accompanied by Samburu to deter the occasional petty thief; there is virtually no violent crime on the island – walk for around three hours in the cool of the early morning. (The less fit can go by donkey or camel.) As the sun moves up the sky, you stride through the sand eight miles to Shela, the Notting Hill of Lamu, along a beach where sea turtles lay eggs at full moon and thousands of teeny pink crabs scuttle sideways into the water. We pass only a goat, a stray dog and wandering cattle and, closer to civilisation, some donkeys with straw panniers being filled with stones and a Moses-style figure wading through the water, hauling a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk and carrying a live goat and a cow.

Finally we arrive in Shela. This is where you can sit on cushions in the famous Sixties Peponi Hotel to have a feast of fish in coconut off big brass trays; eat on the terrace while gazing at the dhows sailing past; or lounge at the bar – the centre of the world out here and the only place in Shella serving alcohol – where rastas and Euros in leopard-print bikinis share Tusker beers with royalty. I sit on the terrace feeling mightily smug at having covered my eight miles so fast. I drink steaming cups of coffee, eat fresh exotic fruits and gaze longingly across the water at the Robinson Crusoe home of the tribal-inspired jewellery designer, Carolyn Roumeguere (Julian Sands, Nicole Kidman and Donna Karan are fans).

And then it’s off to look at Shela. It’s clean, gentrified and quaint. A place less spoilt and cheaper than the Caribbean. A place where women wear sequinned kaftans and cheery sarongs. There’s only one bar and one restaurant; it’ll never be St Tropez, thankfully. But it is the place to buy former dilapidated Swahili houses, most now fashionably renovated. Go and see a few with Englishman Andrew McGhie who started Lamu Island Property – the island’s first real estate agency – and climb their stairs and look over makuti thatched roofs at the biblical scene. A delightful and engaging man, Andrew will spirit you into Arab houses built of coral and limestone and Swahili houses with mangrove and coconut roofs. ‘The island has changed more in the last five years than it has in the last 100,’ he says.

If you just want to rent a house for your holiday, try El Yafir, just moments away from Peponi. It’s the stylish house of Mary Greenwell,- who counts Gwyneth Paltrow, Keira Knightly and Kate Moss among her clients. Mary bought a plot five years ago in Shela. Inspired by the island’s Islamic traditions, she designed her beautiful petit palais with the help of architect Claudio Modola. It has niru floors, Swahili doors and furniture designed by Mary and fashioned by traditional craftsmen in local woodwork shops where artisans make intricate mahogany carved door-frames and bed-heads.

A vast Rajasthani front door leads into a cool hall with a fountain and font with bougainvillea petals floating in it. If there is such a thing as romantic church style, then this is it, with its arches, pillars, hanging glass lanterns and ecclesiastical-style windows. There are an abundance of places in which to lie and daydream: delightful alcoves containing day beds, four posters swathed in muslin, Moorish-style sunken baths and a fairy-tale terrace with urns of bougainvillea, cascading flowers and fringed with cream curtains fluttering in the breeze. There seem also to be endless smiling staff bringing endless plates of endless deliciousness, and they all come with the house when you rent it.

If you’re lucky (and Lamu is that kind of place) Andrew or Mary may introduce you to Eric and Christina Zeller – who live about ten donkey paces away from El Yafir. If so, go and be nosey in their home, Lulu Y Shella (Pearl of Shella), the spacious Fifties house built by casting director Bonni Allen. Now lived in by Eric, an interior and furniture designer and architect, and Christina, the über-stylish accessories designer for Givenchy, their house with its fusion of European and African idioms bears many of his deft touches combined with her aesthetic stamp. Between them they’ve come up with an eclectic mixture of cool features: from Arabic words as murals on the white plaster walls (‘we hoped it was going to be a lovely poem,’ laughs Christina, ‘but it turns out it’s just the opening times of the local museum’), to a stunning Eric-designed driftwood table that stretches almost to the mainland.

If you fancy travelling further back in time, jump in a boat and bounce over the waves a few minutes to Lamu town, a place so remote it has been spared modernisation and civilisation as we know it. Lamu is Kenya’s oldest town, a bustling port and Unesco World Heritage site with 72,000 inhabitants, 25,000 donkeys and one donkey sanctuary (opened by two Englishwomen, natch.) It has just one car (which belongs to the District Commissioner), one road (too narrow to turn; if the DC forgets something he has to reverse home), and 28 mosques for its mostly Muslim population.

Here you find women in traditional black bui buis and men in white kanzu robes wandering along tiny, winding alleyways, some only three feet wide. And there’s a throbbing market whose vendors, seated on the ground, sell sweet potatoes and papayas outside the 19th-century fort – once a prison and now housing a cyber cafe.

Originally a 14th-century Swahili sea trader settlement trading ivory, leopard skins, rhino horn and, later, slaves, it has an alluring mixture of Arab, Portuguese, Turkish, Omani and British influences from its erstwhile settlers: the Turks with their glassware and the Omanis with their art and arches. From the 9th century dhows have arrived in Lamu on the Kaskazi wind from the east with perfume, sugar and silk. Lamu is redolent of that history and going into the charming port-side museum is little different from standing in the street.

There’s fine Swahili architecture (including 16th-century houses) and many 19th-century mansions – high, austere, windowless homes hiding airy courtyards pungent with jasmine and delightful, hidden cool spaces with carved doors, intricate coral work, plasterwork niches and, possibly even antique hardwood furniture inlaid with bone. You can see all this and more with Andrew McGhie, if you’re looking to buy. (It’ll cost a snip of what anything as beautiful would cost nearer home; contact him on +254 (0)720 859 599, www.lamuislandproperty.com).

Lamu is known for attracting the ‘gyp set’: artists, eccentrics, escapists, dreamers, weirdos and romantics (once it was the African version of Kathmandu, a paradise for backpackers in search of alternative realities). It’s far from Kenya’s mainland political instability and election violence. There are no perilous roads, no traffic jams, no television and, thankfully, a lousy internet signal. Just dhow racing, henna painting competitions, donkey racing and er, competitions for who has the most healthy donkey (the prize for a robust donkey? A mobile phone).

It’s a place where time is measured in sunsets and you feel free and supremely relaxed; where you’re in touch with the vast African sky, nature and the rhythms of life. Where there are dhows in full sail and donkeys laden with panniers of coral rock. Where there are exotic days filled with lime sodas, sea breezes and ever-smiling people.

As long as you remember to keep slapping on the factor Ten Zillion suncream (it’s two degrees south of the Equator) and popping the horrid anti-malarial pills, if you must (although, being an island, there are virtually no cases of the disease,) there’s no downside. We bounce back along the waves to our Kizingoni Beach House, a smile on my face, another in my heart. Yes, it certainly out-paradises the competition.

Kizingoni Beach Houses from £1,965 per person based on four couples sharing a house for seven nights on a fully inclusive basis, including flights and transfers and airport taxes. For more information or to book, call Scott Dunn on 020 8682 5070; www.scottdunn.com. E-mail africa@scottdunn.com or info@kizingoni.com.
Virgin Atlantic flies Heathrow to Nairobi daily. Fares from £379. Book on: 08448 747 747; www.virginatlantic.com.

To hire Mary Greenwell’s house, contact Babu British: 00 254 7358 02340; babubritish@yahoo.com. High season prices: December, January, August – $400 for the master bedroom, and $50 for each extra person using the other two bedrooms per night. February and March: $300 for the master bedroom, and $50 for each extra person. Rest of year: $250 for master bedroom and $50 for each extra person. Price includes transfers, private chef and house boys. Food and beverages extra. Menus can be discussed on a daily basis with the chef.