Raffles Seychelles

To paraphrase Fitzgerald, it’s not exactly real life, but it’s magnificent all the same. Clinging to the rocks above a bay on Praslin’s southwestern shore, Raffles Praslin Seychelles comprises some 86 impossibly luxurious, impossibly picturesque villas, all attended not only by private butlers but by drivers in golf carts as well, on hand to spare you the effort of negotiating this hillside property’s dramatic changes in elevation.

The look may be a bit conservative but the comforts certainly aren’t: king beds, full-length windows, plunge pools, outdoor pavilions, outdoor rain showers, 42-inch plasma screens, Nespresso machines.... It’s possible to imagine yourself something of a Robinson Crusoe, but only if you assume you’d be able to whip up some extremely advanced technology. That butler is on hand to do most of the heavy lifting, for an additional cost, and even if you forego that, you can trouble room service at any time of the day or night.

In a place like this a luxury spa is a matter of course, as are a generous selection of bars and restaurants, all suitably high-end stuff. But the icing on the cake — or icing sugar, more precisely — might just be Anse Lazio, a picture-perfect white sand beach. All told, it’s a resort that’s well worth the fifteen-minute turboprop flight over from Mahé.