Hotel Món - Món St Benet ★★★★

In amongst fields of green and gold and quiet wooded dells, surrounded by medieval monasteries and summer residences, you’ll find the Hotel Món St Benet. A vast, sleek and contemporary structure, it offers every luxury you need for a quiet country retreat and makes the most of its charming views with wide panoramic windows and balconies from every room. Long and curved to make the most of its natural surroundings, it perfectly blends in with landscape.

You’ll find your room located along one of the long corridors, spacious and understated, decked in natural wood and muted tones in white and charcoal. You’ll also get the luxury of a large and lustrous bathroom, decorated in glossy black tiles and featuring an oversized bathtub.

The highlight of your room, however will most certainly be the framed countryside views outside your floor-to-ceiling window. Get closer to nature by stepping out onto your private balcony – the vistas that greet you are ones of carpets of velvet-like shrubs, emerald lawns, and gold and crimson trees. You’ll also be able to see the top of the old medieval monastery poking up from between the foliage.

Begin each morning here enjoying breakfast at the Món Restaurant on the public veranda, revelling in those panoramic views once more – scenes that look just like an old-fashioned landscape painting. To the other side of the hotel you’ll find the large cerulean outdoor pool, sunken in a field in green.

Just steps from the hotel, you’ll find there plenty of local attractions to explore. Over 1,000 years old, the nearby monastery is a magical place to discover - looking around its quiet cloisters, marvelling at its magnificent church and exploring the secret cellar and cells of the ancient monks. Next door, you’ll also be able to visit the home of the modernist painter Ramón Casas, which was bought by the family in 1907. Here you’ll step back in time to the year 1924 and see everything just as it was when Casas lived there. The family themselves will guide you around the house, using recordings, projections and light to tell a story as you go.

After your exploration of the village and its history, head back to the hotel for lunch at La Fonda restaurant. Fusing traditional and modern Catalan cuisine, a daily menu is offered, accompanied by local Bages wines and using ingredients from Món Sant Benet’s own orchard.

The rest of your days or afternoons can be spent exploring further afield – the secret coves of the Costa Brava or dynamic and vibrant Barcelona with its many shops, museums and monuments.

In the evenings, return to your peaceful enclave at the hotel and treat yourself to dinner at the award-winning L’Ó restaurant headed up by chef Jordi Llobet and serving evolutionary cuisine. For starters why not try the interesting mixed vegetables from the Sant Benet’s gardens cooked in bamboo with air of jang, or for a main – Iberian pork with clementines from l’Elbre, vanilla and black turnip ragout?

Feeling relaxed and rejuvenated after your nature-filled break at Món Sant Benet, you’ll feel ready to return home energised and at peace.