Menorca has been filling the pages of travel brochures with visions of pine-rimmed bays and turquoise lagoons for decades. It's one of the most popular family vacationing destinations in the Balearics, flaunting a coastline of white pebble beaches and yacht-speckled seas. For rest, relaxation, tasty Spanish tapas, a forever-warm Mediterranean climate, and an escape from the hustle and bustle of modern life, it's surely up there with the very best in Europe.

Menorca is smaller than its party-mad and resort-covered compadre over in Majorca. It's quieter, too. Here, it's still possible to mosey down to empty beachfronts, like Playa de Cavalleria and its covering of scented eucalyptus woods, or Cala Pregonda, with its ochre-tinted powder. Even the more popular coves of Cala Galdana and Mitjaneta are chilled and relaxing, with swimming spots as balmy as a bath, and secluded cuts in the rock where you can sunbathe and build sandcastles.

When you can peel yourself away from the shoreline, it's worth exploring the center of the island and the towns. Menorca tour guides can help you find the mythical megalithic tombs and shrines at Naveta d'es Tudons and Torralba d'en Salord, which date back to at least 1000 years BC. Around them swirls a bucolic landscape of brown fields and rough-hewn stone walls, eventually rising to gleaming whitewashed pueblos like Maó (a charming port town with a colonial feel) and Ciutadella (a medieval jewel with cobbled lanes and churches galore).