Los Enamorados, Portinatx

Nine rooms over a boathouse, at the top of Ibiza.

Drive north on Ibiza until you cannot drive farther. Past the clubs and the beach concessions, up through pine hills to Portinatx, the island's northernmost bay. It was a fishing village once. It is still small. Three coves sit under a wooded hill, and the pines come down to the sand.

The water runs clear and shelves so gently that at S'Arenal Petit, eighty feet from shore, it is still only three feet deep. The last cove is the old harbor, narrow and sheltered from the wind, ringed by low cliffs with pine on top. Fishermen's sheds sit at the waterline.

On the harbor, a 1964 building stands on top of the old fishing boathouses. It holds a nine-room hotel called Los Enamorados. The lovers. The name is a promise about the clientele and a fair description of the owners.

Pierre Traversier is a former professional basketball player with a sneaker habit. His wife, Rozemarijn de Witte, once ran a Dutch interiors magazine. At the hotel they call her a collector of all things and everything. They found the building run down and spent two years on it. The architecture stayed as it was built. The paint came off, back to raw concrete, and they kept it that way. Then came a lifetime of finds: vintage furniture, ceramics, textiles. Almost everything in the hotel is for sale, the chair in your room included. We left with a cap, the least of what was on offer. It is what we reach for when we want the place back.

Every balcony faces north over the sea. The house is sure enough of it to offer a full refund if you cannot see the water from yours. There are no televisions. There is a snorkel in every room. From the boathouse it is one step down into the harbor, and the water takes the day off you before you have decided to let it.

For a longer morning, take the cliff path northeast through the pines. Forty minutes of rock and painted arrows brings you to Punta des Moscarter, the tallest lighthouse in the Balearics, 171 feet of tower in a black and white spiral.

Swim the cove before breakfast. Then buy the chair, or the cap.