I arrived in Cyprus more tired than I wanted to admit. Not fatigued, just that familiar midlife, post-flight, slightly flattened feeling where even unpacking feels like yet another decision.
The next morning, I woke too early at the Elysium in Paphos and, for reasons best described as misplaced optimism, put on my running shoes. The morning had already started without me: birdsong in the gardens, swallows cutting through the pale air, swifts higher above them, the island briefly part of a much larger journey. Cyprus in spring sits on one of the great migration routes between Africa and Europe, and there was something interesting about waking in a place where half the natural world seemed to be in transit.
Residential charm meets Michelin-starred dining
I managed about half a mile before my body made it clear that this was not going to be one of those inspirational travel moments, so I stopped running and walked – which was, of course, much better. The path ran along the water, past the stone terraces of the hotel and towards the rocks, where local men were already fishing with lines cast into the shallows. Sea bream, mullet or bass — the ordinary morning catch of the Cypriot coast.
There were poppies in the grass, salt in the air, and that green, slightly herbal smell Mediterranean places have in spring before the heat turns everything brittle. I had come expecting sunshine. What I hadn’t expected was how alive Cyprus would feel in April.
Of course, you cannot really write about Paphos without encountering Aphrodite. This is the part of Cyprus where, according to legend, the goddess of love and beauty rose from the sea foam at Petra tou Romiou. It sounds like the sort of thing tourism boards were invented for, but in Paphos, the myth does not feel completely absurd. The sea is everywhere. The ruins are everywhere. Beauty, commerce, history and holidaymaking all sit on top of each other in a way that is slightly strange and rather compelling.
Cyprus is often treated as shorthand for reliable sunshine, and of course, that is part of the appeal. But in spring, before the more serious heat arrives, the island becomes more interesting than that. The grass is still green, poppies and crown daisies appear between the rocks. There are archaeological sites, hotel lawns, building cranes, old stone, sea caves, plates of hummus and halloumi — and then, without any apparent contradiction, a Nobu-perfect sashimi salad.
I was there to look at two hotels that show two very different versions of the island. The Elysium, in Paphos, is the more rooted of the two: grand, warm-toned, slightly ecclesiastical in places, with arches, mosaics, colonnades and a sense of looking back towards Cyprus’s Byzantine, Greek, Roman and Venetian past.
Amara, further along the coast near Limassol, is almost the opposite: glass, sea views, clean lines, expensive lighting and that polished international hotel language that makes you think of Bodrum, Mykonos & Ibiza town.
The Elysium is not trying to be cool, which is part of its charm. It is big, comfortable and confident in its own slightly old-world way. There are sea-facing terraces, immaculate gardens, a serious pool, families at breakfast, couples reading by the water, and enough architectural reference points to remind you that Paphos is not simply a beach destination with good weather.
That sense of place matters. The hotel sits close to the Tombs of the Kings and the wider archaeological world of Paphos, where Roman mosaics, villas and fragments of myth are still part of the landscape. You do not have to be aggressively cultural about it. You can spend the day moving between breakfast, a swim, a walk and a massage, but the history is still there, giving everything a more interesting backdrop.
My room had a sea view, which is always the detail that sounds obvious until you wake up to it: the water in front of you, the sky changing, and by evening, the sunset giving way to clear stars and a moon bright enough to make the whole place feel suddenly still.
The food at Elysium had the same reassuring generosity. At Mediterraneo, the hotel’s Cypriot and Mediterranean restaurant, we ate properly and simply: grilled calamari, fresh fish, souvlaki, halloumi, and the kind of local white wine that makes immediate sense beside the sea. Xynisteri is Cyprus’s crisp indigenous white grape — fresh, green, citrusy and clean, somewhere in spirit between Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio, but with its own island character.
The spa at the Elysium was excellent, though I always think the truth of a massage is less about the treatment menu and more about the therapist. You can call something restorative, balancing or deeply harmonising — and sometimes all that means is someone has moved oil around your back for 50 minutes. This was not that. I had the ESPA relaxing massage and my therapist understood pressure, where my body was holding itself tightly, and when to leave things alone. She added a mask to my hair whilst giving me a head massage, then put an eye mask on my puffy eyes whilst massaging my feet. It was exactly what I needed: practical, thoughtful, and genuinely restorative.
In need of some downtime, Claire Singer avoided the usual spoils of the South of France in favour of a…unique hotel experience.
There is something useful about a hotel like the Elysium when you arrive feeling depleted. It does not demand much of you. You can walk by the sea in the morning, sit outside with coffee, swim, sleep, mindless scroll, or simply stare at the view. I don’t mean that in a grand wellness sense. More that sometimes the body catches up before the mind does, and you realise you have been running on too little for too long.
Amara is a different proposition. Near Limassol, it belongs to the newer, sleeker Cyprus: all glass, horizon and carefully framed sea views. It has that particular modern coastal-hotel feeling: pale stone, water, light, expensive simplicity, and restaurants that make the whole thing feel less like a resort and more like a small, controlled universe. It is very designed, but not cold. The pleasure is in the clarity of it: the sea in front of you, the spa below, the restaurants close by, the sense that everything has been thought through.
The rooms are crisp and grown-up, with marble bathrooms, generous terraces and Balmain products lined up by the bath — a detail that is both entirely unnecessary and, naturally, extremely welcome. It is the kind of hotel where the switches work, the curtains behave, the lighting flatters, and nobody appears to think luxury needs explaining at volume.
Matsuhisa Limassol is the obvious draw. After days of eating the things one should eat in Cyprus — hummus, olives, grilled fish, lemony salads — there is a particular pleasure in sitting by the water with black cod and a lychee martini. It is not the ancient version of the island, obviously, but it is part of what makes modern Cyprus interesting. You do not have to choose between halloumi and glamour. You can have both, ideally not at the same meal, though I wouldn’t judge.
There is also Ristorante Locatelli, which gives Amara a second kind of polish: Italian rather than Japanese-Peruvian, pasta rather than miso, the whole thing useful if you are travelling with people who do not all want the same mood at the same time. That, perhaps, is one of Amara’s strengths. It understands that a hotel can be glamorous without becoming exhausting.
The spa at Amara has a different mood from the Elysium: more contemporary, more polished, more in keeping with the hotel’s glass-and-sea-view confidence. But again, the treatment worked because the therapist did. There are limits to what marble, lighting, and a treatment menu can do. The real luxury is someone who understands your body well enough to help it stop bracing itself.
And perhaps that is why spring suited Cyprus so well. In high summer, I imagine the island becomes more about heat, families, shade, swimming pools and the management of sun cream. In April, it has a gentler energy. You can move. You can still smell the grass. The island has not yet been bleached into the holiday version of itself.
There is also something pleasing about a place that does not make you choose one register. Cyprus can be mythological in the morning, practical by lunch and glamorous by dinner. You can think about Aphrodite rising from the sea foam, then watch men fishing from the rocks, eat halloumi with lemon, then find yourself drinking a Cucumber martini while the DJ plays mellow house. None of it feels false. It just feels like an island that has been hosting people, stories, appetites and projections for a very long time.
Travel does not return everyone to themselves in the same way. Some people need music, cocktails and bare feet on sand. Some people need eight hours’ sleep and a properly cold glass of white wine. Some need exercise; some need to stop exercising altogether. I seem to need a bit of all of it: a slow run, a good massage, something glamorous to drink, and enough sea to make my own thoughts less noisy.
