Daily Mail: Luxury vacations in virgin southwestern Greece - Costa Navarino & leisure activities

Daily Mail runs a special feature on the Greek area of Messinia and the luxury Costa Navarino resort located there.
The newspaper recounts the history of Greek shipping magnate Vasilis Constantakopoulos who envisioned and built the hotel as follows:
"Once upon a time, a young boy called Vassilis Constantakopoulos went off to sea.
It was a hard life, but he stuck at it, and many years later he became a shipping magnate - and bought a great swathe of land around Navarino Bay, in the ancient Messinia region, which runs down to the Ionian Sea in south-west Greece.
It’s an area of low verdant hills, sheer valleys, vineyards and olive trees by the million. He went on to build two neighbouring hotels in the bay, and a statue of the Captain — who died in 2011 — stands proudly near the entrance to the golf club which serves them both.
Chic, modern and luxurious
It is a fitting tribute because the Westin Resort, where we stay, is chic, modern and luxurious. The scent of rosemary and lavender wafts through the gardens and the staff invariably have smiles on their faces.
This is no budget destination — but there’s oodles to do. There are endless pools, restaurants, and quiet corners in which to doze and read.
You could quite easily spend the week cocooned in the resort, but to understand why the Captain loved this territory so much, you need to venture out.
The ancient past is writ large — literally — on the walls of Proti island just a short drive along the coast, where Spartan troops scrawled warnings to new arrivals. They roughly translate as: ‘Beware any who come here, there is danger.’
Bike excursion
Proti is the end point for an exhilarating bike excursion that starts on a plateau inland, and then plunges down like a Tour de France descent before winding through olives groves to the sea.
There are four of us on this holiday — my wife and me, our son, Mike, 11, and daughter Alice, eight. While the girls stay at the pool, Mike and I decide to play Chris Froome for a couple of hours.
Halfway through the ride, our mohican-sporting mountain bike guide stops for a drink in the shade of a gnarled olive tree and explains that the Kalamata olives are famous for their size and flavour.
They’re still harvested by hand using wooden poles to shake them loose, before the green olives are cold-pressed to produce the glorious extra virgin oil. Frankly, I’d pour it on my Weetabix given half the chance.
The bike ride (€85 per person) ends with a boat trip across to Proti, where we slip into a deliciously clear sea off the tiny beach at Vourlia.
Scuba or snorkelling
But if you really want to explore, you need to get beneath the waves — and that means scuba or snorkelling.
Snorkelling costs €40 for a four-hour excursion, and it’s like a holiday within a holiday, transporting you to a silent world of wonders.
We get a close up of the rusting wreck of a merchant ship sunk by an Italian warplane.
It now sits in about 20 ft of water, with a little octopus sheltering under the serrated edges of the deck.There are all manner of other activities. We enjoy the kayaking, but while Mike is rhythmically paddling away with his mother, Alice is more interested in standing up and plunging into the sea, where she bobs around like a grinning cork.
For sheer exhilaration, nothing beats the Aqua Park, which makes even adults behave like whooping children. With two long, straight slides, and a helter-skelter, it is irresistible.
Astronomy night
In contrast, there’s the astronomy night. This involves lying on our backs on the roof of the golf course clubhouse (‘it’s like the Hogwarts’ astronomy tower’, says Mike) and gazing up at the riot of stars the Greek ancients once studied.
We love the resort’s Souvlakerie, an informal spot just off the ‘village’ square, where a groaning plate of souvlaki pork with chips and salad costs just €12 and appears in two minutes.
The main restaurant serves a buffet, which sets us back an eye-watering €162 for four, with half a bottle of wine, which makes me think it’s time to sample a good old-fashioned sea-front taverna.
We find one in the charming village of Yalova. We stuff ourselves — and the meal, including drinks, comes to just over €50.
Gastronomic adventure
The final gastronomic adventure comes in the form of a Great Greek Bake Off. We drive about 20 minutes to a modest house in the town of Pylos, where ten of us are put through our paces by two local Mary Berrys, whose fulsome figures are testimony to their cooking.
The challenge is making pasta from scratch. Thinking that the application of some muscle will speed things up, I set about rolling the dough out like Schwarzenegger, only to hear a series of clucks and tuts from the ladies of the house.
When I lift the edges and flip it over, the whole lot sticks to the table and has to be scraped off in ugly lumps. What would Mary say!
Afterwards, an old hi-fi is set up in the courtyard and we learn the steps to a series of ankle-slapping dances as some plate-smashingly good Greek music pounds away.
Though the Westin proves the Greeks have mastered the art of luxury hotels, aren’t we also seduced by the ramshackle charm of two Messinian dames in flour-stained pinnies dancing in a warm breeze under an ancient star-spangled sky?"
Read more here.
RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
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