Collioure — Collioure, France
Stone steps off the solarium into clear water, with the Château Royal eight hundred metres across the bay.
The hotel stands on its own rock at the edge of Collioure, and the way in is a flight of stone steps down from the solarium. The entry is schist, dark and sharp-edged, so water shoes are worth packing; the hotel lends them, but not in every size. A line of buoys encloses about three hundred metres of protected water, and past it the bay opens toward the old town, with the Château Royal and the bell tower of Notre-Dame-des-Anges roughly eight hundred metres off. Collioure is where Matisse and Derain spent the summer of 1905 and came back with Fauvism, and the light they were chasing is still the first thing you notice from the water.
