t' is for luxury
Ivo Dawnay `chillaxes' with his daughter in Capri The telephone beside the bed bleeped discreetly. 'Excuse me for disturbing you, sir. It is the bar here. After a search of the island, we wanted to inform you that we have at last found your Famous Grouse whisky.'
Two days earlier in the hotel bar, I had asked for the brand and been offered a list of a dozen 'premium' alternatives. To outsnob them, I had declined them all. Brows furrowed, nothing was said, but the omission was noted. When I reported the call to my companion, I could see her shiver slightly with appreciation. Charlotte Millicent is a young woman with a welltuned taste for service, particularly in hotels. She is also my daughter, aged 12.
'What does the "L" stand for, Dad?' she had asked, as we arrived at the sign for the Capri Palace five-star hotel L, playing beneath a wall of translucent, cascading water. Luxury, I assumed, and noted her sigh of approval.
Every year I take one of my children abroad in a guilt-edged bid to get to know each other a bit better — put the name to the face and that sort of thing. I had thought about taking worldly Charlotte on a spiritually uplifting visit to the shrine at Fatima, where we could climb flights of steps on our knees, or even a penitential pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. But my daughter thought she would prefer to dedicate our time to researching upmarket Italian consumer trends.
Three years ago, then aged nine, she had begun her studies in Venice. We took in Harry's Bar, Florian, the Trattoria Accademia, the excellent Gritti Palace loos and, of course, Bellini, in both pictorial and liquid form.
So just after Easter this year, we found ourselves hydrofoiling under cerulean skies across the Bay of Naples towards the towering cliff walls of the island and the enfolding arms of the hotel staff. While the ragged-trousered package tourists heaved their backpacks on to the jetty, we were greeted by a pair of smiling, blazered male models, our bags swept up into a purring Lancia, and we were away.
Capri virgins learn swiftly that this is an island of two parts. To the west lies Capri town, the day-tripper magnet of the Piazzetta, overpriced cafés, jewellers and mass couture. Chic in the dolce vita days of Sophia Loren, Graham Greene and even Gracie Fields, today it is a Mediterranean Isle of Wight but with better ice cream.
Take the mountaintop T-junction to the east, however, and you come to Anacapri. It is an old farmers' town where you can still find a genuine whiff of the Old Med and where the contrast between the obscenely rich and ordinary still has meaning — essential if one is truly to enjoy the fruits of undeserved privilege.
As befits a superstar, the hotel keeps an unbelievably low profile behind the main tourist drop-off point. It can only be found my making inquiries. And that serene understatement is its hallmark. Its striking white salons, bedecked in billowing curtains of white calico to keep out the hot sun, suggest a spacious private villa.
An unusual de Chirico is unboastfully mounted on a wall near the lift, a not-toorude Allen Jones above the bar. There is a Michelin one-star restaurant, a serious cellar and a spa. The staff, like Victorian children, only speak if spoken to. If God checked in, one would studiously ignore him Ensconced, we found it hard to drag ourselves out to the sea of mediocrity outside. Once we ventured a full 100 metres to the chairlift that takes visitors to the summit of Monte Solaro and painted watercolours of the Mediterranean pines. Another day we hired an unbelievably dangerous Vespa so we could go and swim with locals at the tiny Lighthouse beach.
Twice, I admit, we went to Capri town to survey with now curled-lipped superiority the products of Prada, Vers ace, Armani, and Dolce Gabbana. (`Nothing you can't find in London,' opined the shopping czarina.) But I worried. Should we really be the only people on the island not to see the Blue Grotto, where Tiberius allegedly cavorted with his catamites, or the Villa Jovis, where, Suetonius suggests, he tortured for entertainment? And where, dammit, was the Famous Grouse?
`Chillax, Dad, we are on holiday,' said C.
Is Capri worth the visit? Hmm Is the hotel? Undoubtedly, but only if you're the kind of traveller who doesn't need to be so vulgar as to ask the prices. As grateful guests, we didn't, and chillax we did.
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