A holiday, a wedding and a honeymoon! Two out of three ain't bad - well that's how the song goes - but I scored the trifecta!!!
Two weeks in Beautiful Bali - 14 February 2012 to 28 February 2012
6 nights at Novotel Benoa, 4 nights at Santika Premiere Beach Resort Tuban and 4 nights at Bali Hyatt Sanur
Well, I can't really call this a JBR as I am not ‘just back' as you can probably tell by the dates above. I have been super busy since our return and have not had many spare moments to post our ‘report' but better late than never :o) Plus, I just love re-living our holiday, it keeps it fresh in my mind and puts a smile on my face and of course makes me run to the airfare sales pages to check ........
This is going to be quite long (sorry) so I will split it up into parts.
14 Feb
The day had finally arrived to jump on a plane and fly towards our future. I was mentally going through my checklist for the wedding and checking it twice! After making sure we had everything we took a short drive to the airport, parked the car and made our way to the check-in kiosk, attracting a few curious glances whilst doing so. I was carrying my wedding dress and let me tell you that thing was not light - well, it certainly wasn't light when I had been carrying it with one arm above my head all the way from the car park, I couldn't wait to put it down! When checking in the lovely lady at the kiosk said she would switch our seats from row 25 to front row so we could stretch our legs a bit - as it turned out we would have had to share that row so opted to have row 9 all to ourselves instead. Ah, the little luxuries you get when you're travelling for your wedding :o)
Walking around the airport we were gifted with smiles from fellow passengers and the airport staff were quite jovial, asking ‘You wouldn't be going for a wedding would you?' When showing our passports I received a lovely ‘Happy Birthday' as this day was also a three in one - departure day, my birthday and Valentine's Day!
Now, I must preface this by saying, as you would expect, a fair amount of time before we left was spent organising certain things, plus we had my birthday to attend to with family, work and a million of other little things which kept us insanely busy - I was very much looking forward to getting on that plane and being able to shrug off the busyness. As soon as I sat down I finally felt that I could let out a huge breath, relax my shoulders and look forward to a much needed holiday full of relaxation and devoid of stress.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way when they get on that plane but this is the first time I have felt it so profoundly.
On the plane I had two vodkas and one cheese and crackers - okay, so it wasn't yet lunch but it was my birthday, it was V day, it was holiday time, it was the beginning of our news lives - so yes - yes, indeed, I will have a vodka or two :o) Flight went really fast, I did a few puzzles, had a little read and before I knew it, it was time for touchdown. This time we didn't have to walk down the stairs and jump onto a bus which would take us to the airport, we were delivered directly there via the usual walking bridge and I must say it was better this way - on the plane I was wondering how I would go being on the bus with my dress, how to make the journey without dropping anything or falling over but as it turns out that was one less worry I had to have. So far great start! Even better, it was the quickest we have made it through the airport; I'm talking 10 minutes max! Usually we take care of our luggage ourselves but decided to treat ourselves this time and paid for assistance. Went to taxi counter, paid for taxi to Tanjung Benoa, made our way to taxi, jumped in and away we went......Novotel Benoa here we come!