La Roqqa Hotel Review — The Flip Flop Forecast

Picture Tuscany all its rolling hills, Cyprus trees and wine, wine, wine. Never think about the sea side do you? Porte Ecole is a Tuscan island connected by road to the mainland that crosses a lagoon full of flamingoes. There are golden sandy beaches, vast forts and Botanical gardens with hiking trails connecting them. Now there is a chi-chi place to stay too.

The year is 1598 and Caravaggio has been arrested for carrying a sword without a permit in the small hours of the morning. An artist accused of hiring assassins to kill his great rival Giovanni Baglione and a painter not afraid of lobbing plates of artichoke at waiters - how Italian. A colourful life for an artist makes sense. So it also makes sense that Caravaggio died in paradise - Porte Ecole, a seaside town on the Tuscan coast. A honey coloured place where the buildings are a sun bleached yellow with terracotta orange roofs.

La Roqqa didn’t fancy the town approved shades of sun kissed skin. La Roqqa opted for deep Carvaggio red for ita exterior making it easy to identify from land and sea. Inside, the hotel is the interiors baby of Italian 60’s glamour and Scandi-design. Makes sense as the owners are also the Swedes behind ABBA Voyage. One of a kind pieces of furniture dot the lobby. “You’ll have to stop me when you get bored, because I won’t!” beamed the GM as she toured us from armchair to staircase name dropping artists and telling interior tales like a proud mum. That means the tech is impressive to, mirrors double up as televisions in your room.

Picture your life here.

Your A/C cuts (love it) as you pull open the door to your terrace. Birdsong fills the village from the Botanical Garden Corsini. From the terrace you sip an espresso whilst watching local fishermen return from the sea with their haul. Later you might potter down the Caravaggio Path to Hosteria Alicinia to eat it. The menu is in Italian (love it) so you won’t be one hundred percent sure of what fish you are eating. Assuming you no speaky Italiano that is.

You have a day under the Tuscan sun ahead.

Perhaps you’ll hop on a yacht to Giglio, reachable by boat in under an hour, dolphins in your wake. A chocolate box town with Maldivianian water quality. Canny locals in a tiny engined rib skrrt around the bay selling ice creams and beer anchor to anchor. Perhaps your legs aren’t feeling sea worth. So you’ll scratch a Tuscan itch and head inland, across the flamingo dotted lagoon for a spot of wine tasting and lunch in the vines.

Whatever you do, you’ll want to make time for Isolotto Beach Club. If you are too pissed to walk, then you can hop on the electric shuttle and roll straight onto a deck chair. The sand is golden here and so is the service. You’ll regret finding this place because you’ll never want to leave it.

By now you must be starving?

The beach club serves fresh fish and vegetables in abundance. Everything is local from food to drink and that’s exactly the way it should be. The atmosphere is relaxed, thank god, because there is sand in your naked toes.

Back at HQ for dinner try the spaghetti agli otto pomodoro, a dish that showcases eight types of tomato, all grown on a local vegetable farm run by a NGO that helps give disabled people the opportunity to work. Order plenty and lick every plate clean. Everything you don’t order is donated to a Porte Ecole food bank. If the hotel's halo isn’t shining enough - there’s no plastic in your room and you have a filtered water tap to fill up bottles with.

A hotel as colourful as Carvaggio and a destination worthy of passing many slow seaside days.