Ondine House is a small hotel kept like a private house — verandas, long breakfasts, and the whole Atlantic at the end of the boardwalk.
“We keep the house the way the coast asks us to — slowly, and with the windows open.”
Fourteen rooms across three floors of one house — no corridors of doors, no two rooms alike. Every room opens to a veranda or the garden, and breakfast travels to whichever chair you have chosen.
The ground-floor rooms, a few steps from the garden path. Wake to dune grass at the window and coffee on the stone patio.
The heart of the house: wide balconies over the pool, sheers lifting in the sea breeze, and the horizon from the pillows.
One suite, the length of the top floor. A sitting room of cane and linen, a tub by the window, and supper sent up if you ask.
Linen is washed in-house and line-dried in the sea air. There are no televisions — the house lends binoculars, blankets and a library of salt-swollen paperbacks instead.
The pool is heated by the sun and quiet by rule — laps before eight, floating after. Towels appear; so does coffee.
Three hundred feet of weathered pine over the dunes. The house keeps chairs, umbrellas and a cold box at the far end.
A library of salt-swollen paperbacks, bicycles with baskets, and a veranda built for doing very little, beautifully.
The day starts where the boardwalk ends: two chairs, a cold box, and three hundred feet of shoreline that belongs to the house. Swim before breakfast; the water is calmest then.
Breakfast under the sea grape, then a bicycle with a basket for the lane into the village. The garden is the house's second living room — shaded, unhurried, always set for one more chair.
The pot appears before you ask. The pool is for laps; the shore is for standing still.
Citrus, eggs from the morning delivery, bread still warm — carried to whichever chair you have chosen.
Shade, the library, a bicycle with a basket. The long lunch is served in the garden on Fridays and Sundays.
A swim, a glass on the terrace, and the light doing what it has done here every evening since 1987.
One seating, one menu, twelve chairs. Then the veranda, the stars, and the house quieting at ten.
One seating, one menu, written each afternoon around what the boats and the garden brought in. Twelve chairs on the terrace; residents first, neighbours when there is room.
Tell us at breakfast if you are eating with us — supper is cooked for the chairs counted that morning, and the menu is read aloud, never printed.
We answer every inquiry personally, usually within the day. Tell us when you are coming and how many chairs you will need at supper — we will write back with what the house can offer.