Spile Beach · Himarë · Albania

The bath stands
in the room.

Not behind a door. It stands free on a plaster dais kerbed with rough stone, on the same wall as the sea windows, a few steps from the bed. Rubble limestone walls, squared timber beams overhead, and the water through the glass.

See the room The mirror

A stone-walled room under squared timber ceiling beams, with a freestanding oval bath on a stone-kerbed dais to the left, a low timber platform bed to the right, and three openings — a window and a balcony door onto the sea, and a two-leaf window onto the trees behind.

01 — The beach

Across the paving, the sand.

A balcony with a glass balustrade and a folding timber table at dusk, looking down onto the paved beachfront street, the sand, the moored boats and the headland with the last of the sunset behind it.

Dusk from the balcony, straight down onto the beachfront street and the sand.

Rruga 2 Dhjetori is a paved pedestrian street, lit at night, and it runs between the front of the building and Spile Beach. Every room has a balcony.

Spile Beach: 30 m
Maracit Beach: 200 m
Prinos Beach: 600 m
Potam Beach: 1.1 km

Distances, rounded.

02 — The stone

Rubble limestone, pointed and left alone.

The walls are not a finish over something else. They are coursed rubble — irregular blocks, iron-stained, laid up and pointed — carried through the room and around the window reveals, with squared timber beams spanning the ceiling above them.

A wide bed on a low timber platform, rubble limestone on every wall in the frame, a glazed door standing open onto a balcony above the sea, and a two-leaf window onto green.

The bed on its timber platform, with the balcony door open onto the water.

A freestanding bath seen past a rough timber stool carrying two rolled white towels, with the sea and pines through a full-height glazed door and rubble limestone to the right.

The timber stool, two rolled towels, and the sea through the glass.

The room in full →

03 — The bath

A kerb of rough stone draws the wet edge.

The dais is pale poured plaster, and its edge is set with a serpentine line of undressed stone that separates it from the oak floor. The bath sits on it under a black pendant, in line with the openings, so the sea is the thing you look at from the water.

A white freestanding bath below a black pendant lamp, standing on a pale plaster dais edged with rough stone, beside a full-height glazed door onto a balcony above the sea, with white plaster to the left and rubble limestone to the right.

The bath below the pendant, beside the glazed door cut through the wall.

A freestanding bath on a stone-kerbed plaster dais, two terracotta amphorae standing at the near end of the same dais under a wall-mounted television that reflects the sea, and two openings onto the water.

Two amphorae on the dais, two openings on the water, the television holding the sea.

04 — The mirror

One wall is only ever seen in glass.

A mirror with a wave-cut edge hangs flat against the stone, and it is the only place the wall behind the camera appears — the beams, the pendant, the television, the bath and the corner of the bed, all the wrong way round.

Read the reflection →

A large frameless mirror with a wavy scalloped edge hung flat against a rubble limestone wall above a white plaster ledge, reflecting the ceiling beams, the pendant lamp, a wall-mounted television, the bath and the corner of the bed.

05 — The scores

9.1

WonderfulGuests on Booking.com score us 9.1 out of 10.

Location: 9.6
Comfort: 9.6
Cleanliness: 9.4
Staff: 9.1
Facilities: 9.1
Value for money: 8.8
Free Wi-Fi: 8.5

Read the reviews on Booking.com

06 — Finding it

Rruga 2 Dhjetori, Himarë.

The address and the coordinate, the beaches you can walk to, when to arrive, and the handful of things worth knowing before you do.

Getting here →