Sodium Boutique Hotel

On The North Edge of Heaven Several days ago after doing just enough research to whet my appetite, I chose and booked the lovely, elegant little hotel, SODIUM, in the middle of old town, Ciutadella, on Menorca. Menorca was billed as a quieter Balearic experience than Mallorca with fewer clubbing opportunities and a calm atmosphere…what an undersell! Menorca is a rich community of pristine dairy farms demarcated with dry stone walls scattered among magnificent smoky hills and pastures that fade into distant purple. It is genuine. The peaceful cows, mostly Holsteins, enjoy sort of enchanted cow-lives and are the first step to fine and famous cheeses. Menorca is a people, a village, a stunningly beautiful island that beckons and welcomes, rewards with ancient history and is exemplary of Mediterranean islands defined by Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, Durrell and E.M. Forrester. Henry James said it best, describing the intensity of emotion brought forth by the Mediterranean culture as, “an excess of serenity.” The Menorcan experience is a step back in time; it remains serene and it completely fullfilled my desire to experience an unspoiled Mediterranean island before it becomes slathered with world-angst and commercialism. The SODIUM experience is a step back also, a step back into gratifying value for money spent, a gracious nod to good design, the importance of lighting, comfort and aesthetics, attention to detail and a crisp, “freshly-ironed” feeling of cleanliness all around. We arrived after dark, found our room (one of five) and went to sleep in a huge, encompassing bed looking out into its own courtyard peopled with towering Strelitzia and ferns set in white gravel. We were suddenly On Holiday! The next morning the proprietress, the cheerful Pierangela, met us with cappuccinos, fresh fruit, warm croissants and black-pig Iberian ham. We asked a hundred newbie questions (she answered them all with grace) and then took off to rent a car (one block away) and to explore. Our stay at SODIUM was pure pleasure from start to finish. On the last morning we had to schlep our rollers out to the car and in that I am sort of wobbly, I went ahead, my generous wife saying, “I’ll get the luggage.” As I looked back, here she came, barely keeping up with Pierangela who clattered over the stone path with the huge rolling suitcase, wished us a fine holiday and beetled back to do more kind things for more people. Pierangela was splendid, SODIUM too, but not without two shortcomings…the shower had no grab bars which is terrifying to us tottering geezers and the gravel courtyard had tree rounds buried into the surface which made the trip a bit of an adventure for the unsteady. Would I go back? In a heartbeat!