matters
DESTINATIONS MALDIVES | FAMILY HOLIDAYS
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’m so excited, I could fly through the roof!” said my 12-year-old daughter Georgie as she counted down the days to our Maldives visit.
She’d spent hours watching YouTube videos of the overwater villa we were due to be staying in at Finolhu, A Seaside Collection Resort, on the pristine Baa Atoll – a Unesco Biosphere Reserve home to 250 types of coral and 1,200 species of fish. If that wasn’t exciting enough, I also told her about
Finolhu’s new Teen Hut, a two-storey haven for 12 to 17-year-olds, where there would be everything from tie-dyeing, cookery classes and ceramics to DJ sessions, dance, football, golf and movie nights. Kids’ clubs in the Maldives have historically catered for younger children well, with an endless array of activities, but it’s less common to have so many facilities geared towards teens. Then, the morning before we were due to travel I got
a call from my sister: our mum had passed away. Should we still go, I wondered. It took me a moment or two to decide – but my mum had always encouraged me to
embrace the opportunities life brings, and so that was what I was going to do. The next 24 hours passed in a blur, but as our seaplane descended and I glimpsed the soft ribbon of white sand and palm trees below, I began to feel a strangely surreal glimmer of wonder.
ARRIVE IN STYLE
As we walked along the wooden jetty towards the resort, I could feel the sun’s warmth on my arms. Before I knew it, our personal butler Aflaah was whisking us off in a golf buggy through Finolhu’s lush network of sandy paths – each lined with a canopy of overhanging palms, bougainvillea and hibiscus – to our overwater villa. With its panoramic ocean view, private infinity pool and a ladder giving us direct access to the sea, the villa more than lived up to the promise of those YouTube videos. The stylish mix of wicker lampshades, turquoise mosaics and whitewashed walls felt like Ibiza reimagined in the tropics.
² 16 OCTOBER 2025 31
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