It’s golden hour in Santorini. That familiar Cycladic architecture, blindingly white an hour ago, is now a buttery yellow; the skyline is at its most Instagrammable; the pounding heat of the afternoon is beginning to wane.
But there’s something off-kilter. Confession: the sea glittering in the evening light is not the Aegean but the Gulf, and the Santorini I describe is not the Greek island but a mimetic hotel nearly 2,000 miles away. I’m at the new Anantara Santorini Abu Dhabi Retreat, an adults-only resort on the Ghantoot coastline, a 25-minute drive from Dubai airport and 35 minutes…
