The resort is now home to ultra-luxury hotels and unspoilt beaches, plus an 86-berth marina where the uber rich can dock their yachts and dive into the crystal clear waters of the Red Sea.

Beautiful, vain, and subject to continual pregnancies the way the sea is beset by tides ... If all of the above makes Girl with a Pearl Earring sound unappealing, then it shouldn't.

I’ve visited nearly every province, so I know it’s a stunning country—but it somehow never graduated to my list of dream travel journeys ... white-beaked dolphins, and other sea life that danced in ...