An award-winning and highly hospitable resort in one of the coolest areas of Goa; with excellent dining, fantastic service and charming design, the laidback but professional Sur La Mer is the kind of place that, once inside, you’ll find hard to leave.

Unlike most resorts in the area, Sur La Mer is set about ten minutes walk back from the beach. For some this might be a problem, but such is Sur la Mer’s strength of personality that this relative isolation becomes a virtue, helping create a cosy kind of bubble in which you’re happy to get lost in day and night.

Two factors really help with this. First there’s the setting, with the original architectural design by the legendary Goa expat Loulou Van Damme, whose signature French Rajasthani colonial chic merges the best of cultures to create this private, luxurious world.

The second factor is owner Aneel Verman, a delightful raconteur whose bon vivant manner and meticulous attention to guest satisfaction makes it a resort that’s both gloriously hedonistic and marvelously attentive, a rare combination indeed.

The result is a spacious place that’s by turns party paradise, relaxed family destination and cool hangout, a venue to recharge your batteries and unwind, to eat, drink and be very merry, to laze in the sun around the pool. Above all it’s a little piece of land where rules are casually discarded and the  old Goa magic still remains.