Been home for nearly a week, feels so long ago that we were in Bali!
Left Perth (Air Asia) on 12th June, 12.40pm. Had a great flight and not too much of a wait once we arrived. Picked up by our friend Gusti and off to Griya Santrian. This was the first time at the Griya and what a beautiful hotel it is. We (myself, my sister and two friends) had booked 2 x garden view rooms - the rooms themselves were nice but the view from both balconies was the wall of the next block of rooms. Before we even had the cases of the trolley I was back at Reception to see if we could change rooms. To cut a long story short, there were no available garden view rooms and we were upgraded to adjoining suites! The suites were just amazing.......the staff at reception were just fantastic about the whole thing and could'nt do enough to help us. We did 'nt have breakfast included in our room (this was made available to us at at cost of US $6 if we wanted it - I think the price for breakfast on their website is $15?) but we chose to just get breakfast elsewhere. We all preferred to eat a little later, went to Flashbacks a few times (excellent food and wonderful coffee).
The first few days were spent shopping, shopping, shopping lol. We found the ladies at the market (Sindhu?) to be fairly pushy but we picked up heaps of stuff at good prices. Jennys (fixed price) was really good, so much easier than bargaining.... We went into Kuta twice, quick look through Discovery and Kuta Square then off to Garlic Lane. Ate at Mozarrella one night (excellent) and at a restaurant about halfway from Discovery to Kuta Square (opposite side of the road to Discovery. I can' t even remember the name of it but it was the worst meal I've ever had in Bali. My Prawn Cocktail for entree was literally a couple of limp lettuce leaves and 5 or 6 tiny prawns........
We went to Cinnamon in Sanur on our first night, very very nice. One of us made a comment on a nice shirt a waiter had on (turns out his wife is a tailor lol) and we arranged to meet her the next day. The other girls had skirts, pants and dresses made and they were excellent. Trinni is her name and if anyone would like her contact details please let me know. Very professional, very well prices and a lovely person also. On our last night we went to The Village for dinner, absolutely gorgeous decor and beautiful food - highly recommended.
We tried to spend a bit of time the last couple of days around the pool, important to have a bit of R & R lol.....The food poolside at the Griya is well priced and delicious.
Before we knew it, it was Sunday and other other girls were getting ready to leave (they were flying out at midnight on the Sunday). My husband flew to Bali Sunday afternoon (I was meeting him at the Kusnadi in Legian that night) so I felt very lucky that I was getting 6 extra days in Bali!
I was a bit concerned that I would feel like I was slumming it lol by going to the Kusnadi after being at the Griya but it was as good as ever. The Kusnadi is a lovely little hotel and even with the price rise its still excellent value. We had a very relaxing 6 days in Legian - leisurely walks down to the beach for lunch or dinner, I read 4 books and generally just relaxed. We went to SD1 to see the kids we sponsor, it has been just over 12 months since we had seen them, they had grown so much!
I'm now on the countdown for the next Bali trip (122 sleeps!), going with a friend this time - 4 nights in Sanur at Griya Santrian and 5 nights at Kumala Pantai (my other favourite hotel)............