The Med with a touch more cred

Long a gay mecca, Mykonos has risen from a naff Nineties mire to pull a fashion crowd that includes Jean Paul Gaultier. Things get very busy in the first two weeks of September when big-name DJs play to Italians, Americans and discerning Brits. "It's perfect for all budgets and tastes,î says Glen Donovan of celeb travel agent Earth. "You can get a package for a few hundred pounds or rent a villa for £10,000 a week." Chill on Paradise or Superparadise Beach, sip cocktails at the Scarpa Bar in Little Venice then hit Cavo Paradiso open-air club until sunrise. (Greek Chapters: 020 7722 0722.)

Half an hour from Pisa, fashionable Forte dei Marmi, on the Tuscan coast, was once the summer home of Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli and is still thronged by the Italian jet set. Set at the foot of the Alpi Apuane with a wide sandy beach, it's impossibly Italian. Take the passeggiata round town, and drink Prosecco from flutes at Bar Roma or Bar Centrale. (Exclusive Destinations: 01892 619650.)

Ibiza's little-known sister island Formentera comes alive for a couple of months in July and August, with Italians flocking to cool chill-out bars like The Blue Bar, set among sand dunes on one of the island's best beaches - Platja Mignorn. There's a pool table inside, while outside there are cushions under awnings, a fourpage cocktail list and great ambient music. Strictly no celebs, this is for a young Euro-crowd - a place to take a tent, rent a moped and search out the beaches with the rest of the twentysomethings. (Thomson: 08702 413157.)

Original and best windsurfer's paradise, Tarifa - a whitewashed Moorish town at the southern tip of Andalucia, in sight of north Africa's mountains - is where ultra-fit water-sports enthusiasts party away the summer. Stay at the cult Hurricane Hotel, close to the beach, with views of the Straits of Gibraltar. Pretend it's not windy enough for you out at sea and sip cerveza while waiting for the evening proceedings to kick off. (Hurricane Hotel: 00 34 956 684919)

The little fishing-port resort town of Vassiliki is on Lefkada's southern coast. Like other hang-loose hot spots it owes its nightlife to the young windsurfers who pitch camp every summer: hundreds of them descend on the restaurants, bars and clubs to party until the early hours at the Tunnel Bar and the Vass Bar, then on to the infamous Zeus Bar for some - you've guessed it - bar dancing, before refreshing themselves on the water the next day. Nothing sophisticated, but good clean fun. (Club Vassiliki: 01920 484121.)

Golturkbuku is a Turkish fishing village on the Bodrum peninsula which has evolved into one of the country's most chilled resorts. Small wonder Peter Gordon (of Notting Hill's Bali Sugar fame) is overseeing the menu at the Ada hotel's new Changa restaurant. The look is bamboo chairs from Indonesia and table lights from Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, with soft R&B until 2am. For party fun, make for Havana or the Shipahoy, which warms up after dinner around midnight. (Visit www.golturkbuku.com.)

Croatia's craggy Istrian peninsula is best reached by Ryanair's service to Trieste, in Italy, followed by a saunter round the coast in a hire car. Rovinj is a Venetian clutter around a port. By day, everything moves as slowly as a sundial. When evening cools things, the port whirs into life, all calamari and cold beers. Start off with Zanzi-bar beside the waters, for clubby sounds, then proceed to one of the best sunset spots in the world: Caffe Bar Valentino, to drink margaritas as the Adriatic blazes, then turns pewter. (Holiday Options: 0800 731 7362)

A Moroccan beach town, just north of Agadir and Essaouira, Oualidia has a butter-coloured beach, a colony of summer windsurfers, and a young crowd, which drapes its wetsuits at the lovely Hotel Hippocampe - a clutch of bungalows sunk in gardens of grapes and dahlias, with a trim of nautical white and blue. Fab for calamari chilled rosé and sunsets across the water from the back terrace. Anticipate dancing raistyle in August in town, when carnival erupts. (Best of Morocco 01380 828533.)

Faliraki: Victim of its own image?