Lounging in Luxury

Just in time for summer, we look at five of Europe's sleekest beaches. Relax on cushioned sun beds and take in the view while food is served to you. There are no beach bums to fear here!

Just in time for summer, we look at five of Europe’s sleekest beaches. Relax on cushioned sun beds and take in the view while food is served to you. There are no beach bums to fear here!

WORDS BY TAYLOR LEONARD

1 | Spain

The beach: Cala Jondal
The restaurant: Tropicana Beach Club
The lounge chair: €6 for the day.
The menu: Give traditional Spanish paella a go. It’s a dish of rice, saffron, and olive oil topped with your choice of fresh fish or veggies. Washed down with a glass of rosé, there’s nothing more blissful on the island. For an early afternoon pick-me-up, order a fresh fruit salad with your cocktail. Too relaxed to leave the water? The staff will ferry out drinks to your boat.
Fly to Ibiza

2 | Italy

The beach: Marina di Massa
The restaurant: Bagno Milano
The lounge chair: Expect to shell out €28 for a bathing hut and sun umbrella, but an extra €7 will secure a sun bed for the day.
The menu: Start with a hearty Tuscan bean soup full of ham and white beans with the flavours of thyme and rosemary. Follow it with a traditional chicken dish doused in olive oil and garlic.
Fly to Pisa

3 | Greece

The beach: Paradise Beach
The restaurant: Tropicana Beach Bar
The lounge chair: €7 for the day, sometimes free in the off season.
The menu: Mediterranean cocktails and €5 local beer can be brought to your lounger from the bar. The restaurant is close by and serves Italian pasta and pizzas next to Greek gyros. For the Mykonos experience, try souvlaki—shish kebab made with pork.
Fly to Mykonos

4 | France

The beach: Baie des Anges
The restaurant: Castel Plage
The lounge chair: €14 for the day.
The menu: Try a French classic—niçoise salad—but as a sandwich. A pan-bagnat combines the delicious flavours of anchovies, capers, tuna, and hard-boiled eggs with tomatoes, green beans, olives, and fresh greens. Have it brought to your lounger and expect to pay about €14 for this lunchtime delight. Another €8 will get you a first class mojito, then you’ll be chilling on the beach with French A-listers like Gérard Depardieu.
Fly to Nice

5 | Cyprus

The beach: Yavuz Cikarma Plaji
The restaurant: Escape Beach Club
The lounge chair: €8 entry fee with free sun bed and parasol.
The menu: During the day you can order everything from pasta to a cheeseburger at your lounger. But at night Escape beach’s 5 Mile Restaurant becomes a European gourmet tour-de-force. The flavours of chateaubriand bearnaise and orange tarragon chicken are on offer, along with fish meze. At Escape, the meze often feature octopus, cheese, melon, yoghurt and aubergine, hot peppers and rice.
Fly to Paphos

Drink up!

Europe’s most refreshing summer drinks

Ever wondered what the best recipe is for cooling off in the sun? Here’s a list of what to order on a hot day, wherever you are in the world. So grab a seat at an outdoor café and start sipping one of these regional beverages

1. PIMMS’S CUP, LONDON
Mix Pimm’s No 1, a gin-based spirit, with lemonade and slices of cucumber and orange. Top it all off with a sprig of fresh mint and you’ll be ready for Wimbledon.

2. ORXATA DE CHUFA, VALENCIA
This milk-like drink made from water, sugar and ground tiger nuts (chufas) is served ice cold. Tiger nuts don’t actually hail from any feline creatures and aren’t even nuts, but are derived from the Cyperus Esculentus plant. The Tiger nut is also not really a nut but a small tuber first discovered some 4,000 years ago. It has many other names like Zulu nut, yellow nutgrass, ground almond, edible rush and rush nut.

3. CAFÉ FRAPPÉ, ATHENS
Instant coffee shaken with water, ice and sugar creates this frothy drink. The recipe was discovered at the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair of 1957 when a Nestlé employee, Dimitris Vakondios, wanted coffee but didn’t have hot water.

4. BERLINER WEISSE MIT SCHUSS, BERLIN
This sour wheat beer is tinted either red or green, depending on whether it’s mixed with raspberry or woodruff (a strongly scented plant) syrup.

5. NEGRONI, VENICE
A perfect pre-dinner cocktail, the Negroni is gin mixed with sweet vermouth and the red Italian spirit Campari. Hemingway used to drink it at the Gritti Palace Hotel in Venice.

Hot spots

The hottest spots to hang out this summer…

Hoping to become a bronzed god or goddess? We calculate the average hours of sun per day this summer (June, July and August) in five randomly selected cities throughout the easyJet network.*

• Glasgow, Scotland - 4.5h
• Krakow, Poland - 6.5h
• Lanzarote, Italy - 9h
• Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - 11h
• Thessaloniki, Greece - 11h

* Figures supplied by the Met Office.