Sun, Sand & Susegad, 3 Nights

Met at Mopa or Dabolim and driven to your hotel on the Calangute–Candolim strip. The afternoon is free on the beach — the shacks run from about ten to eleven and the water is safest between the red-and-yellow lifeguard flags. At six you board the Santa Monica for an hour on the Mandovi past the Panjim promenade and the Reis Magos fort, with live Goan folk and a fado set on deck.

A half-day run up the coast. Fort Aguada, built by the Portuguese in 1612 against the Dutch, still has its four-storey lighthouse and the freshwater cistern that gave the fort its name. Then Sinquerim, the Anjuna cliffs — the Wednesday flea market runs there through the season — Vagator’s twin beaches and the Chapora headland at sunset. Afternoon and evening free.

Check out and drive to Old Goa, a UNESCO site and once a city larger than Lisbon. The Basilica of Bom Jesus holds St Francis Xavier’s body in a silver casket above the right transept, and Se Cathedral across the lawn is the largest church in Asia. Dona Paula and the Miramar seafront follow, then south to Colva or Benaulim — wider sand, almost no crowd. A Goan seafood dinner is included tonight.

A last morning on Colva sand — this stretch is at its best before nine, when the fishing boats come in. Dabolim is forty minutes away and Mopa is about ninety, so tell us which airport you are flying from and we will time the pick-up around it.