Ascending the steps of the main entrance, your first glimpse inside is breathtaking:
a polished granite floor gives way to mirrored pools, then a 40-metre slate-lined infinity pool and finally the sea, all in subtle tones of grey and blue. In terms of sheer physical beauty, there can be few hotels to rival Le Prince Maurice. Set on a 60-acre site with three beaches and its own lagoon, the hotel is the only one in Mauritius to have suites built out on stilts over the water (although the majority of the 89 suites are on dry land).
Our suite (number 9) seemed appropriately colonial with its polished teak floors, dark wooden Venetian blinds, louvred doors and soaring, hessian-lined ceilings. Its separate sitting room was spacious enough to throw a party in. And there were indoor and outdoor bathrooms as well as two terraces over the lagoon, one with loungers to sleep on, the other with a table and chairs to eat at.
I could go on and on about the Indian fretwork screens in the lounge bar and the magical Barachois restaurant, which floats on the water on lashed-together pontoons at the end of a long, narrow wooden bridge. Even the intriguing selection of travel books and novels in the library made it seem special. (Le Prince Maurice is probably the only hotel to have inaugurated its own fiction prize; that's one in the eye for the poet Baudelaire, who came to Mauritius in 1841 to be 'cured' of literature.)
But it's not just the physical beauty of the place, its peace and its facilities that make it so special; it's the warmth, attentiveness and apparently telepathic skills of the staff and their infinite attention to detail. Lie on a lounger by the pool and an attendant in gleaming whites will bring you not just iced water and a towel, but an Evian spray. Find yourself on the beach mid-afternoon, and someone will appear with a little tub of mango sorbet. Opt for a treatment in the superlative Guerlain spa, and you'll find a bowl of ylang-ylang blossoms under the face cut-out on the massage table so that you have something to reflect on as you lie prone.
CONTACT
Le Prince Maurice, Choisy Road, Poste de Flacq (00 230 413 9100;
fax: 413 9129; www.princemaurice.com). Doubles from €525 B&B
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