ASuddenly the traveler has nodded off, caressed by the wind that makes the afternoon heat bearable, gently stunned by the sound of the sea and lulled by the chirping of the cicadas, which seems to reach his ears from afar. When he wakes up after a short sleep, he rubs his eyes. He sits on his balcony in front of a backdrop that looks like a Renaissance painter’s dream of an ideal Mediterranean summer resort: two- and three-storey villas and elegant palaces with loggias and green roof terraces between oleander and rose bushes, pine trees and yew hedges; a holiday paradise, built in a semicircle around a quiet bay with a sandy beach, bathed in the sunlight of a Cypriot late autumn day. Except that all this is not a dream, but a luxury hotel.
Crown Jewel of the Thanos Group
The Anassa Hotel on the western tip of Cyprus is the tourist crown jewel of the Thanos Group, a family business founded in the 1970s that also owns four other hotels in the port town of Paphos further south. From Paphos Airport, if you’re used to left-hand traffic in Cyprus – a legacy of the British, who ruled the island for almost a century – it’s about an hour’s drive to Polis, the main town on Chrysochou Bay, where the Anassa lies. But once you’ve left the long rows of beachside restaurants, supermarkets, basic hostels and dive shops behind you and turned right down a side street, you enter a world of your own.