Ultradeluxe

The minimum covers a villa of about 11,500 square feet with 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, living room, kitchen, carport, roof terrace, and patio. Connections for water, electricity, sewers, and gas cost $1,200 to $2,400 additional. The developers estimate construction time at 9 months to a year on the average. The first houses were built in 1969, and by 1972 the prices had gone up 50 percent. You may have your own architect design your villa, but it must be approved by the developers and local authorities. A group of ultradeluxe villas is under construction near the sea— with prices from $75,000 up.

We use the phrase "a bed of roses" to express the ultimate in easeful luxury. The term comes from Roman times, when the tables at ultradeluxe banquets were strewn with rose petals, plus a particularly heavy layer on the floor, where over-indulging guests could sleep it off in sweet-scented comfort. Today, a jar or bowl of rose petal potpourri is about as close as we allow ourselves to come to the Roman bed of rose petals, but the substitution is an acceptable one for our more abstemious times. A silver or porcelain bowl on a side table, where guests can sift the scented flower fragments through their fingers, is an irresistible reminder of luxuries past.

New accommodations to replace the long-gone original cabins have been added steadily, getting grander as the years go by. Now the lodge can put up one hundred guests. Their choices include housekeeping cottages back in the trees; five guest houses by the water with kitchenettes and a common deck; a pair of two-bedroom boathouse suites with big living rooms; ultradeluxe guest lodges; two lodge suites with kitchens, sundecks, two bedrooms and huge living rooms, one with a grand piano; four pool annex rooms; and five sleeping rooms in the lodge. All accommodations have private baths, and most have fireplaces.

Ultradeluxe rooms and a superb, Michelin two-star restaurant tucked away a little out of the noisy center of town on the comiche, overlooking the sea.

He lifted his glass to his lips and surveyed the circumference of the club room. When he’d arrived at the pretty English holiday destination yesterday, the park had taken him by surprise. His memories of old-fashioned trailers and sad swing sets from his youth were sorely outdated. The mobile homes the holidaymakers rented at the Good Time Holiday Park were brand-new and ultradeluxe.