I have wanted to visit Naoshima for the longest time. It’s probably best described as an art island and Bennesse House, which is at its heart, is part hotel and part museum. If you are staying at the hotel you can wander round the museum after hours and each bedroom has different work or works of art on the walls. The grounds in particular are full of sculpture, including work by the extraordinary artist, Yayoi Kusama. The hotel and various other museums around the island were designed by a noted Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, all of which makes for a unique and special place.

It is tricky to book because they don’t take reservations more than six months in advance and then they release dates on a day by day basis on their website, so it took me several goes to get a reservation for two nights that would fit around our tour dates. It is also eye-wateringly expensive and so breaking that to Robert, who was already less than enamoured with the complicated detour for art’s sake, was never going to be easy. The detour involved 2 trains, a ferry and a bus (albeit a hotel courtesy bus) so by the time we arrived on Sunday afternoon we were both a little bit frazzled. Matters did not improve when,on the ferry, I realised that pretty much every other museum, apart from the one we were staying at, was closed on a Monday!

We were by now in a downward spiral of one bad thing leads to another. Had I booked tickets for the Chichu Museum in advance – asked the receptionist as we checked in. No I replied. Oh dear! he said. In the background Robert was getting ever so slightly fidgety, I had forgotten that he might be more interested in the Wales v Australia match, than whether or not we might get to see 5 of Monet’s Water Lilies series and a bunch of other stuff. The next two pieces of news went down like a cup of cold sick – the hotel doesn’t have TVs in the room as a matter of course and we were due to eat dinner at 6pm both nights (my misunderstanding, I had agreed to dinner from 6 -8pm thinking it was starting between 6 -8pm not at 6pm sharp).

I think it would be fair to say Robert’s patience was exhausted by this point, all the poor man wanted was a cold beer, in front of the TV watching a rugby match, followed by dinner at 8pm with a wife who was happy & smiling, because she was going to see whatever bloody paintings it was that we’d travelled half-way round the world to see. I’m not sure those were the exact words he used, but they had a miraculous effect and several slightly flustered hotel staff dashed about, so that 15 minutes later we had a TV in our room expertly tuned to the right channel, robert had a cold beer, dinner was booked at 8.00pm and tickets for Chichu Museum at 10am on the Tuesday morning had been secured.

All’s well that ends well as they say.

The upside of most of the galleries and exhibits being shut on the Monday was that Robert was genuinely horrified when he learnt that I had expected to lead him on a tour of 5 – 6 places, surely 1 or 2 is quite enough. So, by default, he got his perfect day – a late start, followed by a buffet breakfast, a bit of a walk (admittedly mostly uphill) round the island looking at open air sculpture, a swim in the sea and the most amazing French meal.

We had two lovely days in an amazing environment but now it’s back to reality and on to collect the camper van.

P.S. He wasn’t at all impressed with the Water Lilies